


The Mythical Creature's Guide to Living in the Modern World

by aadarshinah



Series: The Guide Series [1]
Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, POV First Person, Underage Sex, Vampires, Violence, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-06
Updated: 2011-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:18:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 23
Words: 42,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can't ever leave me. You understand me? You started this. You let the cat out of the bag. If you so much as try to break my heart, I'll break you. Understand?” Blackwater. Cannon through p358 of BD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alpha

**Author's Note:**

> the first in The Guide Series

"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream  
and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."

Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

* * *

I was a good person once. In high school, I mean, before the world got out of whack. I was an honour student, did volleyball in the fall and track in the spring, and, in my own way, pretty. I'd a steady boyfriend (Sam, then a sophomore) from Christmas my freshman year all the way 'til the summer I graduated. I was argumentative, yes, and rude, and a bitch at times, but not overwhelmingly so. Sam had taken a year after school to take care of his mom, who was dying of breast cancer, and was going to go to Mount Rainer Tech with me in the fall. I could've applied to the University of Washington, but I wanted to be with Sam, who was far more into Quileute culture then I was and wanted to stay close to home and the Rez.

Then that summer he dumped me.

The next day he started dating my cousin, Emily – who, up until then, had been my favourite cousin, not that it was saying much; her brothers David and Adam were awful.

And then I started turning into a large, hairy, menopausal, hive-minded werewolf where I was not only forced to share the mind of my ex (whom I was understandably bitter towards) but also that of my younger brother and his gross friends. While it could have been "tre cool" (a phrase I used only to annoy the pack, as words like "tampon," "period," and "pantihose" were no longer parts of my everyday vocabulary) to be a mythical creature, or should have been, bloodsuckers, of both the insecticoid and vampiric kind, ruined that for me too.

Then, of course, Dad died. Which was probably my fault anyway for being such a freak of paranormal nature.

And now I was sitting through what had to be the rainiest day in Forks history, guarding said bloodsuckers from my former pack, all because the leechlover had to go and get herself knocked up. God, this was pathetic.

But at least I'd found myself a nice little space between some holly bushes and a large rock that was relatively warm, or, at least, not subject to most of the wind or rain that was currently falling. I'd outfitted it with a rain coat, three changes of clothes, a towel, and a bar of soap, all conveniently stuffed into a rainproof bag I was using to keep my lupine head out of the mud. Except the jacket. I'd thrown that over me as best I could, so at least I wasn't completely soaking.

Leah, Seth intruded into my peace, you're being stupid.

Beware leeches bearing gifts, I snorted back and adjusted my forepaws for a more dejected look.

It's dry… he tried again… and Jake's there.

Jake's an idiot. You just don't go pining after knocked-up married leechlovers. It's like a triple dose of stupid. Then, with all his parents dropped him…

Ah, come on Lee, he begged. I could practically see his puppy-dog eyes – and he'd perfected that long before he started turning into a sandy furball – through our mind link. Normally, at times like this, when one of the pack bothered me, I'd think back something bound to disgust them, but as the pack was just me and Jake and Seth and Seth had grown up with me and now was mostly immune and Jake was so wrapped up in the latest Bella crisis I didn't see the point in it. You know you like him.

Anyone's better then Sammy dearest, I paused to think of the best insult, watched a drop of rain fall off my embarrassingly furry snout, and decided it wasn't worth the bother when no one was around to appreciate it.

Not as an Alpha – you'd have been better then Sam-

My petulance returned full force – Sam always brought out the worst in me, even when we were dating – Technically, as I'm the only girl here… I am the Alpha female, but still, it was something.

A mental roll of the eyes, and he continued, You like Jake as a person-

-werewolf-

-whatever, or else you never would have followed him. A fake tear, Oh, my little sister has her first friend…

I growled aloud.

…Fine, whatever, I'm just saying-

-and I was just saying that if you wanted to crash here, instead of the leech's place, I was going to let you…. Hey, he might have been an idiot, but he was still my idiot brother. Besides, I'd joined this pack to make sure he was looked after (well, that, and to get away from Sam), not because I thought Jake could do any better. Hell, Jake was a few brain cells short of a dumbwaiter, but at least I didn't have to listen to Sam think about how great Emily was or the other guys think how great it'd be if I'd just go away and let Sam and Emily have their stupid werewolf happily ever after. At least Jake was too wrapped up in Bella to have an opinion in the wonderful, unwanted triangle that had sprung up in my life. And too busy to be bossy. At least so far.

Ah, come on Lee, you know you love me.

The sad part was, I did.


	2. Beta

"Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony. So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like 0sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?"

Mother Teresa

* * *

I woke miserable and with the worst stomach ache ever. I blamed Jake. Because, if Jake hadn't decided to go all Rambo on the old pack, I'd never have wound up here, with my muzzle in the mud, and nothing in my stomach.   
I hate you Jake, I thought, just in case he was shifted. Life had really sucked before this, but this was a new level of suckiness.   
He wasn't. Seth was, and sounding dead tired but still chipper enough to peal paint. Esme made waffles, he told me, resplendent with an image of him inhaling said waffles.   
Go to sleep kid; and didn't Mom ever tell you not to take food from vampires?   
It's good!   
And probably poisoned, but what could you do? I could only tell the kid so many times before you just had to give up on him and use your energy for something else. When was the last time you slept, kid? He paused. I sighed and, for some ungodly reason, offered, though I felt like crap, Get some sleep; I'll run patrols.   
I still-   
Sleep. Now. I pulled myself to my feet – paws, whatever – and stretched.   
No, you're not feeling good-   
I'm perfectly fine, I hissed. And I ran.   
So it was me who got to hear Jake's tale when he – finally – phased.   
I think Carlise's been slipping Edward a little too much Xanex.   
I snorted. What, the mind-raper try to make a move on you?   
No. He said this, as he ran to join me on the border, in the tone other people would "I wish." He offered to share Bella with me.   
The conversation replayed in my head, and I found myself gagging. You've got to me kidding me.   
God, I wish I was.   
I thought old bints like him were supposed to be chivalrous and sexually repressed, not into threesomes.   
It was his turn to gag. That's disgusting, Leah!   
Ponderously, Well, there are like... I paused to count, seven of them. Maybe he was trying to invite you to their weekly orgy or something.   
I could see him not too far away now. Bleach. I need mind bleach for that thought.   
At least I didn't send images. I would have sicked up for real if I had. Oh, great, they were forming... And then I was sick, which just goes to show sleeping in the mud without a decent meal does wonders for a werewolf's constitution.   
Jake came up beside me and butted my shoulder with his head. What's wrong, Lee?   
Thoughts... such wrong thoughts... I managed, then pulled away from his too-close stance. I'll head north, you take south?   
If you're not feeling well, you should see Carl-   
I'm not letting Dr. Frankenstein or his monster spawn near me. I'll be fine. God, go girly on me why don't you. Need me to pick up some panty liners for you?   
Fuck off.   
So many choices for comebacks, so little time. I've tried, I settled on solemnly, but you girls keep stealing the vibrators. Trotting north, I hoped that would be the end of it. But, no, Jake chose to further annoy me and jog alongside me. It was kinda annoying, and where the path got narrow, rather then hang back or anything normal like that, his shoulder would bump against mine.   
Personal boundaries, Jake. Look it up.   
You smell weird.   
And you standing three inches away is less weird how? He'd spent all night curled up in his little doggy bed with a food bowl and collar at the Cullens', which would leave anyone smelling minty fresh I'm sure. Those of us sleeping in the mud to protect the bloodlovers had to make do with what scents nature provided.   
Maybe you are getting sick, Leah. You should really-   
I should really get cable brought out to my rock-den-thing and much on pizza. I was only here to make sure Seth was okay. That, and even I admit killing unborn half-vampire babies is wrong. God, I was getting maternal now. Next thing you knew I'd be baking cookies in some stupid '50s apron with the leeches, waiting for the he-wolves to come home.   
Note to self: get rid of hormones. And eat. Probably not in the order.   
I'm perfectly fine, oh mighty Alpha. But, now that you mention it, I could do with a pizza or-   
Esme made-   
I'm not touching anything the leeches-   
I could sense him rolling his eyes. It's not poisoned.   
I imagined the brunette pouring a bottle of rat poison into the eggs. Hell, with the werewolf thing, we probably wouldn't even notice unless they used elephant tranquilliser or something. And I was really hungry...   
I shook myself, and Jake continued to push against my side.   
I can walk on my own- And then I saw that he'd pushed me off the path, towards the Manor. You stupid fucking cock-   
"Language," the mind-raper tisked from the porch.   
Jake, at least, growled at the leech, which meant the world was somewhat normal. Take care of her, he said as briskly as possible, then turned back to the boarder, running to make up time.   
I am not a dog. You don't just drop me off at the vet and- a dress landed on my head.   
"You're hungry, we have food," he said, "and Esme hates the thought of you being uncared for in the woods on our account."   
Then she can hook up a hot plate at my rock, I turned. My rock – some kids got apartments or bought houses when they moved out. Me? I got a rock. A cozy rock that blocked out the wind and had some convenient hollies for shelter, but it was still a rock.   
Leah, Jake pleaded. He had the whole puppy-dog-look down almost as well as Seth. I blamed hunger for weakening my resolve.   
Fine. But turn around first.


	3. Gamma

"She goes about her business indifferent to wars, revolutions, and cataclysms."

W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage

* * *

I hate vampires. I mean, I'm a werewolf. A freak-of-nature she-werewolf. I'm supposed to hate vampires. And they smelled like someone chose to make Taffy in flower shop.

If there were no vampires, there would be no werewolves. If none of us were werewolves, there wouldn't be any fucking imprinting to screw with otherwise decent relationships. If there were no vampires, there wouldn't be any mutant spawn gestating in the stupid cunt right now, which I stupidly agreed to protect from the rest of the pack. I wouldn't be hungry right now, smelling of Eu de Mud, and wearing vampire clothing.

I supposed I should have been nicer – I mean, the guy's wife was dying, though if he'd kept his trouser snake in his pants...

Yea, nice and Leah Clearwater didn't mix. Even before I'd turned into a wolf I was like this. Not as grey old hag bitter, but still mostly like this.

I phased and quickly threw on the white dress, which served to highlight all the mud and sticks and junk in my hair. Good thing I'd given up on trying to look presentable a long time ago. "Point me in the direction of the food, Special Ed, so I can get out of here." But he was looking at me curiously, unmoving. I didn't need this. "If you're going to tell me I smell too, you can just take your food and shove it-"

"No. I just never realized how unusual your mind was."

"Oh. Well. Thank god. Now you and your mad scientist father can psychoanalyse me and become hopelessly rich," I snapped my fingers as I walked past him, "wait, you've already done that. Well, there goes that plan." I flung the door open and paused, stunned by the amount of white they somehow saw fit to throw into this one room. And me all covered in mud too... tee hee hee. "God, I know they didn't have any Home Depots in your time, but would it kill you to buy a can of paint? Its not like you can't afford it."

A quick glance around – stairs, piano, couch, really ridiculously large TV, doors... If I were a kitchen, where would I be? Hmmm... Door number two it was.

I was immediately blinded by an array of stainless steel and glass, and the overly floral smell of two of the she-pires. One of them immediately ran in front of me, said that I had to be the reason her whole afternoon had disappeared, and proceeded to drag me bodily up the stairs. "What the hell are you doing, midget?" I shouted, wrenching myself away and looking for where the door went.

"You need a shower. Now."

"Well, you don't smell like a bowl of roses either," okay, more like eighty of them, but still, "but you don't see me forcing-"

"Shower, now." Said the midget, locking me in yet another bright white room, easily the size of the first floor of my house. I weighed my options: mud, or shower and get muddy again later?

So, okay, I showered. And dressed in the clothes they laid out for me, because going butt naked through a house full of vampires is not something I ever want to do. That, and the windows were too small for me to climb through. I tried.

"Happy now, Skipper?" I twirled for her, the skipped behind her down the stairs.

"My name is Alice, mutt."

"I know." I just don't care. "I'd call you Barbie, but you're just too short. What are you, like twelve?"

"A hundred and eight, like Edward."

Wow. That was old. And Bella'd chosen the dead man over Jake who, at least, was hot blooded. God, that sounded wrong. And I was in a house with a mind reader... "If Bella lives through this, you should sent her Gerontophiliacs Anonymous or something, 'cause that's borderline creepy."

"He only looks seventeen."

"Then he's under age. Whatever. The girl has a problem," my stomach was rumbling by this point, and there was, as I entered the shining kitchen, which was bound to be a pain to clean if they actually used it. That was it! The house was too clean! No human would ever have a house as white and sparkling like this. God, they probably liked having all this shiny, reflective stuff in their house so they could look in the mirror and see themselves sparkling. Stupid sparkling vampires forcing me to eat and live in the woods. Stupid me for letting Jake make me. I was so totally stealing all their extension cords and running a hotplate out to my rock. And a tarp, because sleeping with a raincoat thrown over me wasn't exactly working as well as I'd hoped.

"She'll be fine once she's had the baby and been turned." She said this as she sat across from me at the table, looking intensely interested as she watched me eat. It made me self-conscious, even though her tone was a sorrowful one that I knew she didn't believe herself.

"Yeah. Uh-huh. And how many people have you met that want to be turned into blood-sucking creatures of the night? Besides little miss knock-me-up?"

'Alice' rolled her eyes. "None, but-"

"My point exactly." God these cinnamon rolls were delicious. I was going to have to steal a mini-fridge too.

Luckily, the midget beauty queen decided to just sit quietly and watch me eat after that, which was creepy but marginally less annoying. I stuffed my face as best I could, and, when at last I could eat no more, I did anyway, just to have an excuse not to have to come back later.

"You still smell weird," she said at last after I conned her (well, told her I was going to) into helping me steal some Tupperware that looked to be as old as my mother. Had they had Tupperware for that long? And what the hell did vampires need it for – other then visiting werewolves? Food fights?

"Okay, so you've never smelled a clean werewolf. You all can fucking stop mentioning it every three seconds or we'll see how far I can stick this lid through your chest."

This one was fond of rolling eye movements, I could tell. She just danced across the kitchen, filling a plastic containers for me to take back to my rock at a speed just slow enough for me to see, before handing them to me and saying, "No, I've never smelled a female werewolf before." It wasn't like I'd come around before, so I guess she hadn't, but still. I was vaguely insulted. I may have buried bones in the backyard in my spare time, but... No, there wasn't really anything good that could follow that.

"Want me to piss on something, or can I go now?"

She wrinkled her nose. I could have sworn I heard her mutter, "And I thought humans were hormonal," as I left, which naturally ticked me off further. So I broke into the leeches' garage and tried to find an extension cord, but couldn't find any, the stupid candle-using, brooding-opera-music, black-velvet-caped freaks.

So I stole a ratchet wrench instead, and trotted back with my gleanings to my rock, plotting revenge on the furry idiot who forced this upon me.


	4. Epsilion

"My heresies appal you, my theories outrage you, I never answer letters, and you don't like my tie."

The Seventh Doctor in Doctor Who: "Ghost Light"

* * *

The saddest thing of all was, I was starting to get real attached to my rock. Oh, don't get me wrong, it was a nice rock, and Seth (who'd taken the evening patrols) always got up early to run home and check on mom, and had brought a pair of sleeping bags. Jake even had brought a tarp, rope, and a kerosene lamp, so we had our own little freaking den.

I didn't let either of them know how pleased I was with it. I mean, everyone ended up crashing there in cycles – even Jake, when he wasn't watching over Miss Worst-Pregnancy-Complication-Ever – so they were doing it for themselves just as much as for me, but they went other places, like home and the leeches, whom I had a sneaking suspicion had heard my thoughts and given Jake the damned tarp. Me, I stayed at my rock most the time, dozing.

I woke up sometime around midnight of the sixth day to Jake trotting under the tarp and shaking the rain off him... and onto me.

Mother-fucking toe-wipe, you're going to get the sleeping bags wet. Maybe it was from all the time I was spending otherwise as a wolf, or maybe that it was more comfortable sleeping next to a rock in the great, rainy Olympian peninsula in wolf worm, but I was sleeping phased too.

God, somebody's nesting. When are the puppies do?

That woke me up. I growled and snapped my teeth at him – can I say way too much time as a wolf? - Sometime after I gut you and sew your skin into chew toys.

What? He thought back, plopping down beside me and resting his head one of my sprawled paws. And leave the cubs without a father? Great, now he was doing something that might be called attempting to wiggle non-existent eyebrows.

I'd kill myself before sleeping with you, jackass.

Oh, you say that now... I kicked out with the paw he was laying on. Now that was uncalled for. A pretend sniffle crossed our mental line. Do you beat all the guys, or just me?

Only the ones that are total idiots, Black. I closed my eyes to try to force myself back to sleep. But a thought entered my head before I could get very far in said attempt and I let it fly. Hey, does that make me the Alpha female?

Err... what?

Patiently, Well, I am the only mutant freak here with two "X" chromosomes and you're slobbering all over me, so does that make me like Alpha female? I was curious because it would be great to tease Seth with.

If you want, he sighed, rolling onto his side and wiggling a little to get comfortable. But only if-

I'm not kissing your ass or any other part of it.

Flipping over and nudging me with his nose, Who said anything about kissing?

I snorted at that and shoved him back, harder. God, drive up to Seattle and get a pro already. Sometimes I thought half the pack's problems came from too many horny boys and too few girls willing to come within six feet of them, even if the whole werewolf thing made them look pretty hot with their shirts off. Which most of them always did, because few of them owned any shirts any more. Me? I just looked like an Indian Twiggy who liked to go around with nappy hair, no shoes, and guys who didn't wear shirts. I'm sure half the town was calling me a whore behind my back. But whatever. I didn't care. And, even if I did, the wonderful six-inches I'd grown in the months surrounding my first phase (in addition to some pretty decent, non-body-builder muscles) were enough to see that no one said it to my phase. Which was good, because I wouldn't have to have the pack beg money from the Cullens for my bail. The sexual tension is killing me.

You're one to talk.

Me? I'm not the one Mr. Ice Pop invited to do his wife.

Can't we stop talking about that?

You're the one who woke me up; you get to be punished however I see fit.

You'd know, O mighty Queen of Pain and Torture.

That's your royal Alpha-ness, Queen of Pain and Torture.

Can't you just settle for Beta like all the other girls?

Others? It was my turn to fake a sob. Oh, Jakey-poo, you've been cheating on me again, haven't you? And after all those times you said I was the only girl for you. I shoved him away, harder this time, and licked the spot where he'd touched me. God. Gross. Alpha cooties.

And yet you're licking-

Oh. Yes. Jacob. I'm secretly in love with you and am licking the spot where you touched me because it's the closest I'll ever get to you. I snorted, then continued dryly, O, please, ravage me you sexy male-beast you.

Mind saying that when Dad's around? I think he's freaked – he seems to think this whole Bella experience is going to turn me off girls or something.

I think he's freaked 'cause you turn into a wolf and can chase your tail.

No, for real Leah, he said seriously, ever since Bella's wedding, he's been trying to set me up with girls from the Rez. I mean like, really set me up, send me out to return fishing equipment to neighbours while only their daughters are home, creepy setting me up.

It took me several minutes to stop laughing.

It's not funny Leah.

No. You're right. It's freaking hilarious.

No its not!

What are you going to do, throw a girly tantrum? Flick your tail at me?

To my surprise, he got serious. Everyone thinks I'm still in love with Bella Swan.

God, I hope not. I'd caught glimpses of her in Jake and Seth's minds. I'd seen zombies with better colouring then her.

But I realized a while back that I'm not. I'm really not. I just didn't want her to die. Which is what friends want for each other, right? Because, no matter what, her choosing Edward means she dies. One way or another.

I looked at him through one tired eye. He'd been practising his dejected wolf look. Whatever Jake. Love her, don't love her, she's still her own person. It's her decision to make if she wants to screw the Abominable Icicle or not.

I know, he said smally, curling up atop the sleeping bag nearby. That still doesn't mean I want to see her kill herself for him.

I know, Jake, I tried to say comfortingly – mostly because I didn't want him to turn out like I had, which is to say a bitter old shrew whose only thing going for him is he'll be the best bloodhound Forks police will ever see. Hmmm... maybe if I'm low on cash one day... I know... I'll tell you what: I was planning as offering myself up as a green card bride to some guy who doesn't speak any English or expect me to cook or clean or anything when this is all over and the leeches move away. But, if you're still alone then too...

Ah, Lee, I didn't know you cared.

I don't. But we can share the tax credit.

You've gotta stop reading those romance novels, Lee.

Fine. Just trying to be helpful. See if I be nice to you again.

 

He gave me a look that said, "That was you being nice," and drifted quickly off to sleep. Mutant bunnies were invading (I noted as I fell asleep watching his dream through our still-open mental link), and the carrot crosses were failing... Quickly... get the radioactive spinach... that'll scare them away...


	5. Zeta

"I like them."  
"Yeah, but you like everyone, even people who try to kill you... especially people who try to kill you.'"

Dillon Hunt and Tyr Anasasi in Andromeda's "Banks of the Lethe"

* * *

People are idiots. Werewolves and vampires are no exception.

You see, I was just patrolling as usual when the screams started, and wouldn't you know it, I had to go all the way to leech manor before someone – Emmett, annoyed by my marching in and interrupting Rock Band, finally told me.

"Hey, mongrel, I was winning!"

I looked from the body-builder wannabe to the screen (showing that, the moment I'd unplugged his controller, he'd failed out of the song) back to the vampire. While I did so, a scream of pain echoed from upstairs. I cocked my eyebrow at him.

"We were trying to see who could get the lowest passing score. I was 80% done had only one and a half stars!"

"And you're not concerned at all, Tweedledum, about the screams coming from upstairs? Or are you just waiting for your turn at the bi-monthly torture session?"

Without looking, he plugged in the guitar again and restarted the song. Rather then the rock-level noise you might expect coming from the monstrous sound system, it was only a whisper, which was unfortunate, because it meant we got to hear the cries in full surround sound. "Torture is a delicate art... and gets boring after the first fifty years. Nah, that's just Bells."

It rather amused me that he was down here, playing a video game, while his brother's wife went through what had to be the most creepy labour in the world. It was something I would do. "Are they filming The Miracle of Birth: Supernatural Edition up there, or..." The or being the unsaid, "Is the goth-wanna-be dying?"

"Yeah. They're trying to get The Thing out of her without killing her. I couldn't watch – what little I saw was fairly gross."

Great. Something that grossed out vampires. Either that, or he was really worried about her and just wanted to pretend that she wasn't dying. "Great," I said aloud. "Jake up there?"

"Want me to tell him you stopped by?"

I blinked. Manners. From Tall, Blonde, and Jock? What is the world coming to? "Err... yeah. Sure."

I turned to go, but he stopped me, "Hey," indicating his plastic guitar controller. "Wanna stay and play a round?"

I blinked again. "Is Doc Lestat slipping tranquillisers into your morning blood, or were you just seriously brain-damaged as a child?"

"No. It's uppers. And fine then. I didn't wanna play with you anyway – you'd've contaminated the guitar, and then I'd have had to burn it, and this one strums the slowest too." Just for that I smiled at him menacingly and flopped, rather dishevelled, upon the nearest of the overly white couches. A remote was nearby, and so I grabbed it and turned off the Xbox and on the satellite. "I was playing that, you know."

"And I've been living at a rock without cable. So, unless you want to run a line out, I wanna catch up on America's Next Top Model." I didn't – not really, but it was the first thing I came across that wasn't stupid sports, stupid cooking shows, or stupid home design shows.

Two, apparently, could play that game, because he sat down next to me, propping his feet up on my lap, and yawning really loudly. At the end of the first set of commercials, "If you're going to be such a bitch, you mind getting me a beer?"

"Nuts-for-brains, I know you're on an all-liquid diet, but-"

"Fine then. Don't. Be that way. I'll just suffer her, beer-less, and-"

"As noble a pursuit as watching you get drunk may or may not be, I'm not your fucking maid-"

"No, if you were you'd have one of those-"

"You so much as think that thought and I will put your ass where your brains should be."

"-Fren-"

"All right," I said, launching myself at him, which frankly did nothing but bruise my knuckles on his I'm-so-chiselled chin, though it did cause him to fall off the couch in laughter, "You asked for it." A moment later, there was the sound of glass breaking as he rolled into the coffee table. He cut the glass as he rolled.

There was a sound on the stairs, and suddenly I realized that the shouts – the sound of Bella's labour – had stopped. I shuddered. As much as I didn't care for the little idiot, I didn't want her to die. Didn't want her to turn into a vampire either, but that was her choice. I knew what other people making choices for me was like, and hated it – that's why I was with Jake now. His pack, I mean.

"Will you stop," said Blondie, who was standing by the monstrously expensive piano with a bundle writing in her arms, "playing with the puppy and come meet your niece, Emmett?"

So the bitch had a daughter. Jake had said she was convinced it was a son. Idiot. How, with a mind-reader husband, did you not realize that?

There was a moment of coochie-coochie-coo-ing, and then came the question. "And Bells?"

"Edward's working on it. It might be too late... But at least Renesmee's okay."

Okay. I couldn't help it. I let out a monstrous bark of laughter. "Ren-es-me?" (I dissolved further into laughter with each syllable, and by the end my voice was as squeaky as a chew toy.) "She named the demon child that?"

Shrugging as if it didn't matter, "It's a combination of her mother's name and ours."

"And that makes it better?"

Her husband, who looked as if he wanted to agree with me, just continued playing with the baby. It was a wise decision, cause she had a temper. Which was exposed as she continued, "At least she has a husband."

"What is this?" (Though, admittedly, this bringing up of Sam and his imprinting idiocy was a low blow, even for her.) "Gone with the Wind"

"No, only that Edward didn't leave her for her cousin."

"No, he left her to be," I held up my hands for air quotes, "'noble' and let her sulk around the Rez for months like somebody killed her and forgot to tell her about it. So don't even bring Sam into it. Not when your best card is The Brooding One was guilted into coming back to her."

"I-"

"Rose," interrupted Emmett gently, "maybe you should try to find something for Renesmee to eat?" Now what would a half-monster child rather eat? Human brains or the blood of innocents? Hmmmm...

Blondie offered me her best evil glare then spun, haughtily, towards the kitchen. Her husband shrugged at me and followed, leaving me alone in the still mostly standing living room. Bad idea. What to break first?

I had no gum, but for some reason there had been a bowl of hard candies on the table, which now were spilled across the floor. I stepped on a couple of these (which hurt in bare feet) and ground them into the snow white carpet and took another one and, removing the game CD, jammed it inside the Xbox's disk drive. Childish of me, yes, but necessary. Besides, it wasn't like they didn't have a thousand free hours they could spend cleaning the floor or the bucks to replace it.

I was stuffing stupid little decorative pillows under the piano lid when Jake came stumbling down the stairs. He was covered in blood and sweat and looked like an extra from a bad horror movie. And sad. So sad.

"Oh, Jake, I-" I felt for him. I really did. Which was kinda creepy, but I did.

But, hollowly, he interrupted, "Edward thinks the venom is taking."

Then she was going to be vampire. Another stupid, glittery, blood-drinking vampire. "Crap."

"Yeah," he shrugged, and looked lost in the big living room.

I swear having to take care of my nutjob brother and our Alpha is bringing out the maternal in me. Or, at least, the don't-be-a-fucking-idiot-ness in me that told them not to get the sleeping bags wet or, I dunno, eat dirt. "I'm taking you back h-" God, I almost called my rock home, "to the den," I recovered.

"No, I-"

"You look like a ball of yarn after the cat's done with it."

"I should-"

"-rest," I finished, leading him out of the haunted manor and mentally trying to prepare for the worst couple of days of my life once Sam and the others found out about Ren-fucked-up-name-me. "You can thank me with chocolate and expensive beer."

"I always knew you were an expensive whore," he tried to joke.

I punched his shoulder, then put my arm around it and dragged him down the slowly-becoming-worn path.


	6. Eta

"My only point, the only point I'm making, is life has got to be allowed to continue  
even after the dream of life is – all – over…."

Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

* * *

The thing about being a supernatural creature is, apart from the infrequent vampire-lycan wars and the birth of strange hell-beasts from wombs that have to be torn open by their daddy's teeth, for the most part it's rather dull. I mean, its not like we can hold down jobs or anything, so we don't have any money, and so we live with our parents. Okay, I mean everyone but Paul, Jared, Sam, and I are high school, so they'd be living at home anyway, but Jake and Seth and Embry and Quil will be graduating next year, if they ever get to go to school enough to pass. So, when we do move out, it's to glorified rocks that, while we've made quite comfy, what with the sleeping bags, tarp roof, and the wonderful holly bushes that serve as fairly well-insulated walls, are still glorified rocks.

And, yes, while we do have the whole patrolling thing, the only enemy we ever come across any more is one of the other pack running the border between the Rez and the Cullens' land, which is to say, our new pack's. It gets kinda dull sniffing the same things every day, and while I'm glad it's quiet, the thing is now that The Thing (as I've decided I shall call the unfortunate hybrid) is born and the Rez school is about to start up again soon, I'm kinda freaked that I'll be left alone on the land with the Cullens. This is both creepy and worrisome, because Sam's pack might decide to make a surprise attack and...

Third thing I hate about being a werewolf: since I can't choose to have kids (not that I wanted any anyway, but I'd rather the choice then fate reaching down and twisting off my ovaries), I'm kinda actually concerned about Sam's pack hurting Renesmee. She may have a stupid name, drink blood, and grow at an alarming rate, but she's just a baby. It's not her fault her parents are idiots.

It's been three days, Jake sighed. He wasn't far up the path from me, just out of sight, and with a little push I was beside him.

Since Monday? Yes. That makes it...

Stuff it, Lee.

Wrong, your royal russet-ness; the correct answer is Thursday.

He huffed and tried to knock me off the trail. When that didn't work, he trotted ahead a few steps so that he was nominally "in the lead," which was designed more to annoy me then actually do anything. It's been three days since Bella was bit.

And...

Apparently, the change is supposed to take three days.

So he wanted to go see if we had a new Bella-pire to play with or a funeral to attend. I hoped it wasn't a funeral: that would mean having to go home and get clothes that covered more then 1/3 of my body. Not that I was opposed to the idea of larger clothing, mind, it was just that any larger was hard to carry around or made me feel I was running a fever. Then go to Monster Manor and see.

Do you spend all your time thinking of rude things to call the leeches?

No. I obviously spend some of my ways to put you down, O Emperor of the Floppy-Ears.

All that time and the best you can come up with is an insult to my ears?

I've said it before, Black: you're such a hot and rugged man-beast that it's all I can do not to jump you. These "pathetic insults," as you call them, are the best I can do with my limited female brain capacity – when I'm not drooling over-

You know, he said, turning down a path towards the Cullens', if you say that often enough, I might start to believe you.

I gave a low wine at both that and the leech smell, Keep it in your pants; breeding season isn't until January.

Now at the manor, we headed behind desperate bushes, me to change into one of those tiny dresses I wore for phasing-convenience and most certainly would have called whorish on any other girl I might see it on, him into vastly less asking-for-inappropriate-comments shorts. How on earth, he began before phasing, "do you know when werewolf mating season is?" He paused just long enough to pretend he was coming to a vast thought process, "If this means you're going to start humping my leg, I'm buying you a leash and a muzzle."

Kinda annoyed by the turn this conversation had taken – we were supposed to be insulting him, not my hormonal deficiencies, "I was kinda creeped out that first month after I phased." Yeah, that was putting it mildly; I'd the whole pack a nervous wreck when I didn't get my period that month. I mean, I couldn't be pregnant – I knew that, having slept with Sam only once, before finals my senior year. It was rushed and hurried and he was done before I'd even gotten started, which is what I suppose unpractised sex is like, but I never cared for a repeat performance and used finals as an excuse not to do it, and then almost right after graduation I went to the Macaw Rez for two weeks because of Adam's wedding (Emily's next oldest brother; her oldest, David, is Claire's dad. And another ick for imprinting) and then Emily came back with me to get away from the idiots...

And I was so glad I wasn't in wolf form, sharing these wonderful thoughts with Jake or, God forbid, my brother, who was supposed to be sleeping but was a guy and any guy who didn't wake up immediately at the words "food," "sex," or "baseball" was one I didn't know.

"Yeah. Tell me about it."

"So I... I kinda went online and searched everything I could find about wolf mating habits."

"Has anyone ever told you you need to get a hobby?"

"Yes," I sighed long-sufferingly as we, for some reason unknown to God or werewolves, willingly entered vampire headquarters. "But I can tell you come disturbing things about cat breeding-"

I was cut off quickly by a, "Gross, Leah," from Jake and a, "So can Emmett – he went through veterinary school in the eighties," from Alice, who was sitting with her husband in the living room, as if waiting for us. Only they were watching Dr. Phil, and rather intently I thought, so probably not.

"Emmett? College?" Jake gasped mockingly, "I want proof."

"In the basement, first filing cabinet on the right. Try not to touch Carlise's diplomas from the Università di Bologna – some of them are very old."

This actually piqued my interest. "How many does he have?"

"Three: two from the 1700s and another from 1830, right before he came to the Americas."

And I thought Bella like creepy old guys. Papa vamp must be ancient. Which bothered me less then I thought it should, which in itself bothered me.

"We came to see if Bells is up yet," Jake said, dragging me towards a free couch. The whole thing with me being dragged in this place was kinda bothersome. I could walk people – I wasn't Bella Swan! I suppose it was the guys way of seeing I didn't drop dead of hunger, starvation, or stomach viruses caused by uncooked deer, which was sweet in a way I'd never admit, but mostly annoying. I mean, I had been feeling better since the day he forced me to eat Esme's cinnamon rolls, but the bad thing about about this whole pack-mind thing was that they knew I was lying when I said I felt completely better. So I wasn't completely cured of my wolf hunting experience? Big deal. I'd dealt with worse things in life then a stomach bug; hell, when I still had periods I'd worse PMS then this. Still, though, I sat down. And put my muddy feet on the couch.

"She should wake up in seventy-three minutes and eighteen seconds." I thought of jokes I could make about atomic clocks, but found none insulting enough to warrant sharing. "Bella should be perfectly fine."

Her husband, who'd remained with most his attention of Dr. Phil, spoke out of nowhere, "Her pain has begun to subside." Oh, yes, this one was the vampire mood ring. No wonder he was watching Dr. Phil – no matter how gay it seemed.

"That's good."

"It is. Rosalie and Emmett have taken Renesmee towards the mountains, so she won't prove too strong a temptation when Bella first wakes up. The others are upstairs, waiting."

Hmmm... what jokes could I make about her eating her own young? So many choices- that it distracted me for a moment that I didn't immediately laugh when Jake said, "I guess we have to tell Sam and the Elders."

"And get lynched? No, let them find out in their own damn time," I insisted.

"It's their right to know. Once we make it clear to them that Bella and Nessie are going to stick to the treaty-"

"Like logic ever worked on those boneheads."

"Good, I'm glad you volunteered."

"I'm sorry Jake. You must have been hearing voices again, because me going back to La Push and telling the Elders that the leeches are going to be good little boys and girls is exactl how I wanted to spent my afternoon."

"If I go, you know that Sam-"

"-will want to have a bitch-slapping contest for Alpha of the Year-" Or his dad would try to set him up with toddlers next, in case he leaned like Quil, one of the two."

"-and Seth-"

"-couldn't say no to a vampire, let alone Mom-"

"-so you have to do it-"

"-because I don't give a damn."

"I'd knew you'd say yes." Before I could point out I hadn't, he asked, "Mind picking me up some clothes while your at Billy's?"

"What am I, your mother?"

Jasper spoke again, turning the TV off and looking at his wife, "You were right."

"I'm always right," she said smugly.

"Right about what?" Jake asked, hunkering down to wait for the next sixty-whatever minutes.

Continuing as if her super-vamp ears hadn't heard them, "I give it two weeks, a month at the outside."

Now I was curious. "A month on the outside of what?" How long it takes The Thing to surpass Jake's SAT scores? It wasn't that hard, all you had to do was fill in the little bubbles-

"I think it'll be Thanksgiving."

"The usual bet?"

"Naturally."

"I have six weeks," I asked "if you'd like to tell us non-porcelain people about it."

Jake laughed. "I think Seth wanted someone to pick up another sleeping bag whoever went back next – he seems to think you shed too much."

"Sure, that's what he tells you," I huffed, and stomped towards the door. "Anything else while I'm at it? Pizza? A pony? A couple of bags of dope?"

"Actually-"

"Fuck you, Jacob Black," I snorted, and marched out of the white explosion that was called a living room. Whatever he replied, I was too far away to hear properly.


	7. Theta

"Could you whisper in my ear the things you wanna feel?  
I'll give you anything to feel it comin'. Do you wake up on your own  
and wonder where you are? You live with all your faults. I wanna wake up where you are;  
I won't say anything at all... Don't you love the life you killed? The priest is on the phone;  
your father hit the wall; your ma disowned you. Don't suppose I'll ever know what it means to be a man;  
something I can't change. I'll live around it. And I'll do anything you ever dreamed to be complete.  
Little pieces of the nothing that fall. May, put your arms around me. What you feel is what you are  
and what you are isbeautiful. May, do you wanna get married. Or run away?"

Goo Goo Dolls "Slide"

* * *

Jake is my Alpha. I respect that. It freaks me out that I do, but I do. If Sam is like a three on the grand scale of best Alphas ever, Jake is like a ninety-three, which is more then passing.

Still, him sending me to tell Sam and the Elders that The Thing's been born and abstinence-only-education-failed-me is a vampire is just not cool. I've been avoiding La Push since the day our pack broke away, with the exception of returning that evening for clothes and a rain jacket. Why? Is it because I'm attached to my rock? Could it be because I just don't want to hear how I shouldn't be defending mind-raping, emotion-sucking, future-seeing vampires? No. It's because Mom's probably freaking, and I don't do well with people freaking. I have a tendency to slap them. I really do. Once in the third grade we went on a field trip to Seattle and there was one kid who was freaked out by heights but went atop the space needle anyway... Needless to say, the teacher wasn't fond of my peace-keeping capabilities.

Well, he just sent me to tell them, so I'll God-damn tell them. He never said anything about being pleasant about it. In fact, I distinctly recall my bitchiness was exactly the reason why I was sent.

So, who to tick off first? I ask Seth as I run towards La Push. He's running the border, which is still calm. Thank God.

There was a hopeful lilt to his voice when he asked, Do you have to tick anybody off?

You poor, poor naïve boy. Of course I do.

No you don't; you're a nice person and-

Did you fall and hit your head?

Err, no?

Then who do you have me confused with? Princess Diana or Mother Theresa?

The Bride from Kill Bill, maybe; Mother Theresa, no.

I tuned him out from then on. I loved action movies as much as the next person, but I did not want to hear about my brother's thing for Uma Thurman. It was just borderline creepy that he might compare me to her character... shudder.

I swung by home first, but Charlie's cruiser was there and I didn't want to have to explain to the chief of police why, a) I looked like I'd been living in the woods for a few weeks or, b) was under the impression his daughter was now an immortal freak of nature. So I went to Jake's house instead to talk to Billy. I didn't bother knocking, because we were always in and out of each other's houses anyway. I really should've though, 'cause I ended up walking in on Rachel and Paul very hot and heavy on the living room couch. "Get a room already, you too," I snapped at them, before walking (causally, I thought, down the hall to Jake's room). "I guess Billy's not here."

They scrambled into their clothes while I raided Jake's room, which was surprisingly clean for a werewolf's and smelled rather nice, like Jake. I grabbed a backpack and started stuffing whatever clothes I could find, thinking it served him right if ended up bringing him only things that didn't fit any more, 'cause of his monster genes' growth. Hell, I thought he'd grown an inch since we'd broken off from Sam, but that was just me. Maybe it was because I spent most my time as a wolf, and even when you're twice the size of a normal wolf, a wolf that's easily half-that again taller seems, naturally, taller. But whatever... There were exploded shoes sticking out from under the bed, and things that might not fit me any more in the closet. But, again, whatever. If he wanted anything in particular, it was his fault for sending me.

I pulled on his jacket, which'd been lying on the bed, because walking around half-naked was not something I cared to do, and it was raining again and I'd left mine at the rock, den, whatever-you-call-it, and shouldered the loaded bag. I barely found it heavy at all, which depressed me for some reason.

When I came back into the living room, the pair had hastily dressed and were glaring at me. "What are you doing here, Leah?" Paul growled. Actually growled. It was kinda pathetic, really. Like I was so scared of the kitten... Especially when he was half out of his pants.

"I'd ask the same of you, but I don't want to spend the night scrubbing my brain. I'm looking for Billy; where'd he roll off to?"

Paul opened his mouth, but Rachel, luckily, cut in. We'd been friends, once, me and her sister and her, but that was a long time ago now. "He's registering Jake for his senior classes down at the school."

"Cool," I said, not really meaning it. But she was my Alpha's sister, not that it mattered, and had once been my friend, before they went to high school then college, leaving little old me here to waste away, protecting what remains of our tribe. "You know what time I should have him and Seth be there?" They both looked at me askance. "What, so I don't want my brother turning out like this one," I indicated Paul, who showed me a finger, "and might as well make sure I'm not stuck with another shit-for-brains for an Alpha.:"

They continued to blink at me. Really. "What'd you want to tell Dad?" Rachel asked after a minute or so.

"You're brother and I are eloping in Vegas and we need him to sign the age waiver." There was more blinking. "God, you're worse the the bloodsuckers." They at least had a sense of humour. Of a sort. "No, his furriness sent me to tell the Elders the mutant child was born on Monday and so far her only crime is her vamp-whore of a mother named her 'Renesmee.' Oh, yeah, and Bella's a vampire now." I stuck my hands in Jake's jacket pockets and found a key chain... Yes! I could drive the Rabbit back, not have to carry the backpack in my teeth and have to listen to Jake gripe about how there are bite marks in the leather... "Well, nice seeing you; let's not do it again, shall we?"

I swear I was smiling as I tossed Jake's junk in the back of the Rabbit and drove it to Mom's. Ha! A car! As much as I liked running, sometimes it was nice to be human...

The smiled dropped when Mom saw my... state (because it was either go to her though Charlie was still there or try to find Sam, which I didn't want to do) as I came through the door, and even Charlie, who looked to be oblivious to most things thinking his daughter was dying of a horrible South American disease (coughpregnancycough), looked curiously at me and asked, "What the hell have you been doing, Lee?"

"Dog-walking," I told him solemnly, looking at Mom as I said it, "for a neighbour. She just had a baby girl."

"Oh, really," Mom said, luckily catching on (and if Charlie knew we were talking about his newly-deceased daughter, he didn't show it), "Were there any complications?" I love my mom. She is smart, even if she likes the father-of-the-vampire, and beautiful and can control her temper and managed to raise me.

"Only the expected ones," by which I mean, monster child, vampire mother, et cetera et cetera et cetera. "I'm gonna take a shower and grab some things before heading back. In case they need me, you know."

"Which neighbour?" Charlie asked.

"You wouldn't know her," Mom quickly cut in, while I silently added, "Not any more, at least."

Instead I said aloud, "Did you get a chance to register Seth for his classes?"

"Oh, no, honey. Was that today?"

I sighed. Charlie had been coming over a lot ever since Dad died, helping Mom and stuff, but she tended to forget things like groceries and what-not when he came over. Old people love was wrinkly and gross. But, I thought positively, at least it wasn't them I walked in on. Shudder.

So I took my shower quickly, unable to linger in the water as I might've liked. The things I did for my pack, I swear. Go without showers, sleep at a rock, protect vampires; now go to high schools and sign my brother up for classes. If I didn't get unwanted peaks into his mind, I'd never have even known what grade he was in, let alone he'd be a sad puppy if he got stuck in, I dunno, pottery or ballet.

The things I do, I swear. Already I'm making sure they don't wind up like me with this school thing, already making sure they have a safe and dry place to sleep, or do anything too idiotic in protecting the leeches and the half-breed monster. Next thing you know I'll be baking muffins like my I'm-so-perfect cousin and having afternoon tea at the bloody Cullens'.

Luckily, though, Charlie was still there when I left, so Mom didn't try to trap me into staying. She would've if he wasn't. So I went to the Rez's school. But could I just register Seth and be on my way, back to my rock and a world, however sucky, that made sense? Noooooooo. Because Sam's pack was there – Sam and Jerod and the younger boys who were still in school, - presumably to sign them up for classes, because Sam was like this messiah-father-big-brother figure to the idiots who didn't know better, but I knew what it really was: the universe punishing me for thinking I could do something nice and get away with it. Well, that's the last time I try to do anything for Seth or Jake, let me tell you. If we actually slept in the sleeping bags, I'd fill theirs with shaving cream. Since we don't, I'll just stop by the grocery store and pick up some flea and tick medicine and spring it on them. Though I should probably do that anyway...

Help! I'm mom-hormones are overtaking me. Who knew I had an inner Emily? This has to stop. Maybe I am sick and instead of getting a worse fever then we wolves already have, this is my symptom. As much as I hate to, I might have to have Dr. Evil check me out and make sure alien's didn't abduct me and put a niceness implant in my nose. Maybe that's why everyone was insisting I smelled different, alien metals stuck in my nasal cavity.

Anyway, I'm standing in line about five people behind them trying not to be noticed when Brady turns around and, like the soon-to-be-freshman idiot he is, goes, "Hi Leah!" like the whole pack break-up thing was no big deal, much the same way the Great Schism was just a small dispute over who ate the last hot pocket.

I glare at Brady with my best if-you-smile-at-me-you-will-die glare and say by way of greeting, "Umpa lumpa," as he's one of the few wolves still shorter then me, though that, of course, is bound to change.

"What are you doing here, Lee?" Sam asks, as if it weren't obvious. I'm also getting real tired of people asking me that. Like I need a reason to be on my Rez? Well, now I guess I do, but still.

"Seth needs to graduate sometime, dickhead."

"And that meant you came...?"

"'Cause you don't send kids into enemy territory."

"We're not the-"

"Sure, sure," I snapped, "whatever you say. I'm not the one wanting do do in The Thing just because her parents got frisky on their honeymoon," shudder. Vampire sex. You'd probably get better action from a fudge-icle. And, again, shudder, "which I'm sure might surprise you that people do."

"So the-"

"The kid's born and her mom's gone over to the Dark side. Still, it was her choice. You remember the concept of choice, right? The thing where people get to choose who they're with-"

"That's enough Leah," he snapped. It's at times like this when I'm hard pressed to remember why I dated him. He was older, yes, which was a plus for him, and showed an interest in me for who knows what reason, which was a boost for my ego, and I liked his kisses well enough. Maybe it was just because it was what was expected of me. Maybe because I wanted to be one of those girls with the perfect life, 'cause even then it showed signs of sucking. I dunno.

So it was with pleasure I snapped right back at him, "You're not my Alpha any more, Sam, nor my boyfriend. So you don't like it that I prefer Jake over you – he's ten times the man you'll ever be, even if he's stupid enough to care for the-" I remembered we were in public, and watched my words at the last minute, "bloodworms. But, whatever. You never listened to me anyway. I don't know why I even bother with you any more."

The line moved up. I was two spaces from the front.

"It's not too-"

That's when bitchy Leah came out to play. "To come back to you? I'm sorry, Sam, but you just don't get it: Jake's the true Alpha. Things just clicked between us once I broke away from you and yours. I mean," I looked straight into his eyes and inserted a small, practised laugh, "we've been going at it non-stop," by which I meant arguing, "and even Seth's started begging us to cut out already." He claimed our arguments kept him up when he was trying to sleep. I told him the sun did that, since, obviously, it was up when he wasn't running. "He's just such a... well-built guy, you know?" Which was undeniable – the unfortunate part of wolf-hood being that I knew this for a fact, "He's even made me his Beta and everything..." Sam's face was turning a shade of purple I didn't know a person's could turn without them passing out. I tried not to laugh in his face. Serves him right. "I guess all I needed was the right Alpha to bring me out of my shell," which he could interpret any way he pleased, but I hope it caused him to remember the one awkward, uncomfortable time we'd slept together, and apply it to his hopefully as pathetic dealings with Emily. Not that I cared what he did with her, not at all. "Oh, look, my turn." And I walked right past his fish-gaping to the desk and hoped Seth could handle Wood Shop as an elective.


	8. Iota

"Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true,  
the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats,  
and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and  
everybody lives happily ever after."

Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Lie to Me"

* * *

"You signed me up for Wood Shop?"

We were sitting on the Cullens' covered porch, on their porch to avoid the sickly sweet vampire smell inside after Jake insisted that we all see how wonderfully well behaved baby Bella was being with her blood-lust, at the Cullens' because they had bribed us with the best Tex-Mex food I've ever had, even if they were on that liquid diet of theirs. So you can understand, after my hell of a day, being subjected to this additional annoyance was enough to send me over the edge, and a spoonful of chilli con carne towards his face. "It was either that or Home Ec."

"And at least she got it so that, if you have to, you can sneak out after fourth and still have creds to graduate," Jake said in his best attempt at being the wise old Alpha he wasn't.

"What about you? I basically stole the schedule Billy made for you."

"One word: sabbatical."

Seth was balanced on the railing, stuffing his face. Jake was sitting on the porch, leaning against one of the larger posts, and I was beside him, finished after my fifth plate and dozing on his shoulder. Hearing his idiocy though, I took the spoon that had recently flung chilli and rapped his head with it. "You will go to school."

"But, Leah, honey," he said, taking the spoon from me and placing it out of my reach, "I though you wanted me to spend more time with you?" I wanted to kill his benign smile and show him just where he could stick it if he thought he could end the conversation that easily.

"Uh, no. I don't care if you wanna dead beat around this place after you graduate, but until then I will have the leeches physically drag you if I must to get you to school."

Seth leapt off the railing and went inside for eighth helpings, shaking his head at us. "What's with the pro-school thing all of a sudden?" Jake asked as he helped himself to what remained on my plate. "I didn't think you were that into it."

I wasn't when I was there. I kept waiting to get out. But now, here I am, living under a tarp and guarding vampires with no hope of gainful employment after they leave. I'm only good at fighting things, but I hear the Army Special Creatures division is like a glorified polo club for things effected by radiation. I could work at the diner in town, or the McDonald's in Port Angeles, but with only a high school education I'm getting nowhere fast. I can't go to college, not even Mount Rainer Tech, because a) I have no income and b) monsters don't invade around my class schedules. I didn't think it would be any different for them, the whole college thing, but if I at least saw they got a high school diploma, that was better then nothing. I'll have done my civic duty. Then, one day, when Jake takes his place on the council as "chief," and Seth takes Mom's place, at least the Rez will have guys who can do basic math and build Wood Shop birdhouses and spice racks. So what if I'll probably still be living at the rock, eating the leeches' food and be a freakishly unaging wolf who acts as guard dog for exorbitantly loaded vampires?

I think that's my problem. I really do. Even at my bitchiest, I've never been very selfish. I mean, I'm here right, taking care of these too. With Sam, we were just kinda "whatever" to each other when we weren't making out, and what we did do together was all at his prompting. And afterwards it was like, I may hate the guy and verbally insult him every time I see him, but I still want him to be happy, even if he broke my heart and started doing my cousin. And even now I was an ass of the worst kind, but at least I was an ass for the pack.

God that sounded wrong.

Anyway, I eventually answered, "I'm not. I'm just looking out for you," yawning as I did.

"Maybe you should spend some time watching out for yourself. You're still smelling strange."

"Sleeping in the mud-" I argued from his shoulder, already half-asleep and ready to pin it on the stressful day I'd had, what with Vamp-er-Bella waking up and having to go to La Push and seeing Paul and Rachel like that, though Jake just as well would pin it on my smell. Seth said he hardly smelled the difference, though we'd both spent time sharing our Alpha's brain and even I thought it was a little different. Stronger. A little more earthy and woodsy and with a faint hint of squashed holly berries then it'd been before. And the vamps could obviously smell it too, so it wasn't just in his mind.

"I didn't say it was a bad thing, Clearwater. It was just an idea. Like sleep. You're always up on Seth about it..."

Speak of the werewolf: "If you two are so intent on sleeping, this place has like a thousand beds."

"Sleep? At the Bat Cave? No way."

My brother looked to Jake, for all I know wanted him to play the vampire's Xbox until they ran, "I think I could stand some rest before my patrol... but I'll go back with Leah... Hey, wait up Leah," he called to me, clearly surprised that the thought of being asleep near the leeches had motivated me enough to stand and start down the path to my rock. "I said I'd go with you – see you later, Seth."

I continued slowly down the path, allowing him to catch up with me. After a moment, "So, you might wanna be warned the next time you see Sam, he'll probably blow a gasket." I was still wearing his jacket, and my hands were in the pockets, playing with his keys again. There were a handful key chains in addition to the two keys actually on the ring – a Ferrari logo, a black square one that said, "Obey the Penguins," and a simple third one that said, "I beat the Kobayashi Maru," and made me wonder what the hell I'd gotten myself into joining this pack – and made it oddly heavy.

"That mad about this whole thing is he?"

"Err, kinda." Why did I have to sound so guilty saying that? Why did I feel so guilty saying that? Jake and I joked all the time about this exact sort of thing. I was almost as comfortable around him as I was Seth. I wasn't big on people touching me, or touching them for anything other then hitting them, but Jake didn't bug me as much as it could. I'd even gotten used to being around him all the time, which normally would have annoyed the hell out of me, and now merely drove me bonkers.

"Why, something else happen?"

"Not really... He's just kinda gotten it into his head that you and me are a thing."

"You wouldn't have done anything, by chance, to encourage this would you?"

"Me? No? I just said some things with... contextual meanings."

We both broke into laughter as we neared the rock. "I don't know whether to kiss you, Lee, for distracting Sam like that or as charge for bringing me into your bickering."

I shoved him and entered the "den" first. "You so much as try I'll see to it you never have puppies."

"Ah, you wouldn't do that to me – it wouldn't be fair to you at all." The look on his face was a mixture between flirtatious and idiotic. I threw his keys at it. "Thanks, I knew you wouldn't give them to me any other way."

"God, are you going to get after-school special on me? 'Cause if you say that I'm a 'beautiful girl' who 'deserves to be loved, respected, and appreciated,' by someone other then Sam the douche, I am going to run right back to La Push and tell your dad that you imprinted on The Thing and will be playing lap dog to the vampires forever."

"That's a low blow, Leah, even for you – and imprint on Nessie? She's like three days old. And- no, it's just too gross to think about," he seemed to think about it anyway, and shuddered. "What if I tell you I'm secretly in love with you, worship the ground you walk on, and would gladly beat up Sam for your honour?"

I suddenly woke up. In the darkness of the night, with the moon not yet risen and the shade of the thick trees blocking the light, Jake's face was shadowed. I could not tell if he was serious or not. I didn't know if I wanted him to be serious or not – I'd never thought of him that way before, no matter how much I joked about his flea-ridden hide. Okay, maybe I had, but not seriously. I didn't know what to say, and felt my face flush. "If you do that, I think I'll tell Billy you imprinted on Edward instead."

"Fine then," he said, moving to lie down on the free sleeping bag, "Be that way," and went, in a particularly teenage-boy-like manner, straight to sleep.

Though I'd been dead exhausted all through dinner, I could no longer sleep. I just sat there, on the sleeping bag closest to the rock, with my knees pressed against my chest and my back against the cool stone, thinking. Not just about what he'd said, but a lot of things, late into the night, until the moon was a thumbnail sliver I could see just below the tarp's edge and the hollies, and real wolves were howling in the distance.


	9. Kappa

"I grok people. I am people… so now I can say it in people talk.  
I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much…  
because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting."

Valentine Michael Smith in Robert A Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land

* * *

I didn't know what I was going to do. I mean, it was just spectacularly great.

Today was the first day of classes at the Rez school, so I'd shifted to the night patrol so Seth could get some shut-eye and be well-rested and all that shit, and was now taking up the morning patrol 'cause Jake, obviously, was in school, and I was going to be exhausted after this first week, while my body got used to the lack of sleep I was going to be forcing upon it. I didn't honestly think Sam would keep the younger kids out of school on the first day just to attack the Coffin Creeps. He was real big on doing the proper thing by society... I wonder if that meant he'd get around to marrying Emily one of these days or wait for her to be knocked up first? I'm only asking out of curiosity.

But it did mean that I was alone on Cullen land. With the Cullens. It was kinda creepy, not to mention potentially hazardous and annoying.

So I caved. The first three hours of nervous running of the borders was more then enough, so when I ran across Emmett returning from hunting (shudder), not only did I about jump him (in a completely asexual, murderous way), but I agreed when he asked me if I wanted to watch a movie or something.

It wouldn't have been so bad, I really think, if that something didn't turn out to be Rock Band and nearly his whole coven seemed to have forgotten they had jobs and other human-like things to do. After being savagely toasted for a seventh song in a row, I tossed down the controller. "This totally sucks." I can't understand why, when he's playing to loose and I'm just trying to hit the notes, he still ends up finishing the songs without failing out. And failing out. And failing out. "Why did I agree to this?" My nose hurt, my eyes were now seeing spots thanks to some of the psychedelic backgrounds to the songs, and I was pretty sure that the mind-raper and his Lock Ness daughter were laughing at me. Stupid sparkly vampires.

"Because," said the midget, putting her call to her stockbroker (yes, throughout all this she'd been on the phone to her stockbroker, it turns out, rather then ordering from some bizarre European clothing designer, which I only realized when her walking care bear of a husband asked her something about it) on hold for a moment, "we have every werewolf movie ever made."

"We can still do that. We've not seen The White Wolf in ages, or The Beast of the Yellow Night, or Legend of the Werewolf, or Werewolf in a Woman's Prison..."

His platinum blonde wife broke in, "...or Lady and the Tramp."

"Children," the brunette – Esme, who even now was baking in the kitchen, several rooms away – admonished them, "that's not how you treat a guest." It smelled like she was going to bribe us this time with seven layer cake. And brownies.

However you treat a werewolf guest, it somehow involved me being bored enough to watch through the two males – Jasper and Emmett – fight over the TV remote at super-speed and end up rooting for opposite teams in a Spanish-language soccer game while their wives watched on, the former's eventually giving up on her stockbroker and trading online herself, while the latter's was (of all things) knitting. For some reason, this fascinated me more then the soccer (of which all I could understand, despite having taken Spanish in high school, was, "Something something shoes... something very well something something. Gooooooooaaaaaaaallll!), because, primarily, it was just bizarre to me and, also, because she was doing it at human speed. Ignoring and ignored (hopefully) by the thought robber, his airhead wife, and their little liability, I wound up watching her for half-hour before she snapped at me, "Is there a reason you're staring at me, cur?"

I held my hands flat, near my chest, "Oh, yes. Please play fetch with me," before snorting and lowering them. More seriously, "What're you making?"

Either she was stupider then I thought and forgot for a moment how to talk, or she was taken aback by my politeness, "A quilt."

"Why?"

"Because Renes-"

"No, I mean, why are you making one? I figured you guys were so loaded that you had stacks of stuff just waiting to be used."

"Not blanket wise," she informed me. They might have been freezing cold, I supposed, but the upside of that and their chronic insomnia meant that probably didn't need them. They didn't need jackets either, but I'd seen Tiny Tina's closet and knew they'd plenty of those. "And it means more if you make it yourself."

I was suddenly struck by several things that I never intended to know or care to know about a vampire: however much she hated us, however many insults we might trade, she'd have traded anything to be in my place, because I was more human then her, and she'd have given anything to be human again. That's why she'd helped Bella through her pregnancy. It was why, in part, she and the others went to high school and college over and over again. Why she was knitting at human speed.

God. Sympathy! I was feeling Sympathy for vampires! Oh, agony! Oh, pain! Somebody, please, save me before I forget they're our mortal enemies, the reason for all my pain and suffering!

So, yea, that's why when, a couple hours later when Doctor Tick returned from where ever he'd been, he was initially greeted by me shouting, "Stupid piece of dirty, cross-dressing, cum-drinking, Ricky-Martin-loving, fascist sheep's ass! Why won't you purl!"

To which, for a moment, the yarn seemed to respond, "Hello, Leah. Having difficulties are we?"

I swear I would have gone off if I hadn't realized (only by one of the leeches greeting him by name) that it was Carlisle, not the yarn, talking to me. "Err, yeah," was all I could respond though, because I had to yell at his mind-reading son instead to stop laughing at me.

"Carlisle," he said through his laughter, making me even angrier, "Leah wanted you to run some tests on her."

I did?

Apparently the Doc was curious about this too, because Edward seemingly randomly said, "I'm curious too, and it won't effect Jasper and Alice's bet either way."

Oh, yes, he was more concerned about his freak sibling's bet then whyever he thought I needed tests done on me. Feel the love, people.

"That'll be great."

What would be great you imbecile? Fill us non-monstrously freakish freaks of nature in why don't you?

"Edward is merely interested in seeing your recent... change in smell might be caused by a genetic component, or if it is merely physiological."

"And he couldn't have just said this why?"

Apparently Doc didn't have a clue either, though he did have a room full of medical equipment in which he drew a sample of my blood, hopefully not for a midnight snack, and pulled a couple of my hairs from their root. He tried to explain to me the tests he intended to run, but I wasn't listening when he was (too worried that, though I apparently smelled like dog, the whole coven would come running in the room to kill me the moment he nicked my skin, and after that he started going on about how fascinating it was to be able to study werewolves, how boring the last 400 years had really been, etc etc etc, which bored me immensely.

I found myself anxiously awaiting Seth and Jake's return, even trying to make the damn knitting needles work for me after Carlisle was done instead of running headlong out of the place like they expected me to. Or I think they expected me to. But I missed the guys. Was worried about them, but actually kinda missed them too. I explained it away to myself that wolves were social creatures, and so you'd expect werewolves to be, and spending a day with mortal enemies learning how to knit is the kinda thing which brings out longing for pack. I also told myself that it meant nothing I missed the both of them, because, I mean, Seth was my brother and missing him was almost understandable, and I guess I was starting to like hanging out with Jake...

I refused to let myself believe it had anything to do with what he'd said the other night, whether it was true or not. I absolutely refused that. I wouldn't go through that pain again, not if Jake imprinted – or anyone imprinted, Jake was just an example, as he was the only non-related werewolf I came into much contact with any more – or I did, or anything. I'm happy right where I am. I can make it as I am. I don't need any one or anything to validate my existence.

It's not like every book and movie and play and song in the world is written about love and how great it is and how you need it to survive and how much it hurts not to have it.

It's not like they're right, and you actually need it, because it gives meaning to life and whatnot. Because what could be more meaningful then protecting my tribe from danger and making sure my brother and Jake stay in school and sleep and junk?

And I certainly don't, as far as anything but purest, Snow White and her freaking seven dwarves, friendship for Jake. And respect for his Alpha-ing. I don't like him, and never could. And never would, even if I wanted to. Which I don't. Emphatically.

Even if I can't help but notice every time he transforms now that he is pretty well-built, even for a werewolf.


	10. Lambda

"You're always telling me I don't have any faith. Well – don't you see? –  
that's part of what makes me so indecisive. I wait to see what will happen next –  
because I don't believe that anything I might decide would matter."

Johnny Wheelwright in John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany

* * *

It was Friday night, and Seth was out running. The world seemed to have gone back to normal. I didn't end up hanging around Monster Manor all afternoon, because Jake and Seth were around, and I could tease them and race them and generally hang with them instead of Super Sparkles Barbie and her demented yarn. Especially when they'd insulted the very long, lumpy scarf I'd made in their absence. Back to normal.

So, I was catching up on sleep that night when I had the strangest dream: I was in wolf form, in a large clearing. There was a giant tree in the centre of it all, and around it were wolves of every colour. Sandy wolves like Seth, red-brown wolves like Jake, spotted wolves, zebra striped wolves, electric blue wolves – you name the colour, they were there. Some were large, some were smaller then me, and others were just cubs. They were all just standing around the tree, looking out. Looking towards me. I was standing far away, out from under the branches, but could see them all in sharp clarity. You promised us, Leah, they seemed to say.

I didn't promise you any damn thing, I said right back, a bitch even in my dreams.

But you said- they argued right back, stupid dream figments that they were.

No I didn't. Go away. I can't take care of you too. Find your own damn mothers.

But they wouldn't stop calling out my name. Leah, Leah, Leah over and over again until it sounded like one long, lilting word, . I tried to block it out, but couldn't. I ran as far as I could, but the noise still chased me.

And then, suddenly, I woke up. It took me a moment to realize what woken me, because I was curled up between the rock and another warm body, and very comfortable, despite my strange dream. I blinked tiredly, because I really did need the sleep, and then realized that the warm body I that was curled around mine was not furry like my own. No. It was distinctly fur-free, and very male.

I immediately jumped to all for paws and butted Jake with my head as hard as I could, hoping he heard my, Oh my God Jake, what on earth do you think you're doing? even though he wasn't phased. Whether he did or not, it did cause him to wake up a little and mutter, "I'm trying to sleep here, Clearwater."

Well, I wasn't having that. I phased myself, threw on the longest shirt in reach, and covered the rest of me with the sleeping bag. Then I punched him for real.

"What was that for!" he gasped, bolting upright as the wind flew out of him.

"I'm not a bloody golden retriever, that's why!"

"Surprisingly, I knew that already!"

Finding a hereto unknown level of loud, "Then why the fuck were you using me as a freaking pillow, you cock-sucking ass-raider!"

"Why were you acting pillow-ish in the first place!"

"I wasn't – that's why I'm yelling at you, you idiot!"

"I can't help where I fucking roll-over in my sleep," in the thin moonlight, his face was flushed and eyes glittering with anger. I imagined I looked the same way, with lines on my face from the bumps in the sleeping-bag's fabric and my hair sticking out every which way.

"You better if you insist on sleeping next to me naked!"

"You're the only wolf I've ever seen wearing clothing, Le-tard."

"I was fucking trying to stay dry in this shithole of a place after you decided we were going to help your stone-banging ass-wipe ex kill herself!" I poked him hard in the shoulder. I hoped it hurt. My jacket idea had worked too, no matter how stupid I had to have looked. "And don't try to change the damn subject."

"I don't even know what the God-damned subject is!"

Why didn't that surprise me? "It's you, being a naked human male using me as a pillow, dipshit!"

"I-" he began automatically, then paused. Much more softly, so soft I could barely hear him over the ringing in my ears, "I went to sleep wolf."

The poor idiot child. "Then," I said as calmly and as quietly as I could manage, which was not very, "you phased out while you were asleep."

"Yeah. Probably."

That's what he had to say? Yeah fucking probably? I took a deep, cleansing breathe. It didn't work. "I don't care why you did it, I don't care if you had a bleeding nightmare or confused me with your stuffed Cookie Monster or whatever, just don't do it ever fucking 'gain." And, with that, I flung myself back down on my sleeping bag, wrapping it tightly around me.

"Ah, Leah," he said in that way he had of making me feel kinda guilty about yelling at him. He probably didn't mean to – but, as afore stated, I didn't care. I only wanted him not to do it again. Because he had been warm and I'd been comfortable and him doing things like that after saying things like he had the other day and the fact that he was distinctly not unpleasant to look at made things very awkward for me. And confusing. I mean, first things first, he's Jake. I've known him since he was born. So maybe I don't exactly remember that far back, but that just goes to show I don't have any memories where Jake wasn't around in some form or another. Second thing, Rebecca and Rachel were the closest things I had left to friends, and dating (or doing anything else) with their younger brother seemed creepy. And soap-opera-y. And the third's right there: Jake's younger then me. Still in high school. Ergo, jail bait. So even if I was considering anything with my beloved Alpha (which I'm not), that's another reason why I shouldn't (not that I would). Fourth, err... I had a fourth, where did it go? Here, reason reason reason... Oh well. Fourth can be... that boys are icky, rude, never put the seat down, expect you to make dinner for them, and inevitably end up breaking your heart. Really. I saw a Dr. Phil at the leeches' the other day where the wife found out that her house was in foreclosure in the newspaper, her husband having gambled it away on line. And sent in tax returns saying he'd made 15 million dollars to the IRS, and tried to pay them off with mail orders he'd printed off his computer. For real. That's what guys do to you. They expect you to cook and clean and slave away for them, and then they ruin your credit and break your heart. Which reminds me of the real four I'd been thinking of, but I've already made one up so I guess it can be five now: imprinting. Big thing to forget. If anything were to happen (which it won't), imprinting could ruin it all. Again. And fool me once... And during this wonderful mental conversation I'm having with myself, he continues cheekily, "you know you liked it."

I had, but he wasn't to know that. So, sitting up again, I scooted over a few inches, and plopped my head as hard as it would go on his (quite well-defined) chest. "See if you like this, jerk." And then I yawned.

Being a guy, if I was suffocating him, he wouldn't say it. He just wrapped an arm around me and said, "See, I knew you had a thing for me."

"In your dreams."

"I wish. I'd kill for dreams like that." I elbowed him and, resigned not to let him out annoy me, let myself start drifting off again. After a moment, during which I hoped I was winning, he decided to go non sequitur on my ass and say, "Quil and Embry are in my English class."

"I'm sorry." I wasn't really. As I've tried unsuccessfully to ignore, he was not your average wolf-man, and I was enjoying a little too much (I blamed it on hormones, which hadn't had relief since I invited Emily to visit and she decided to borrow both my favourite shirt and my boyfriend. She's not returned either yet).

"You should be."

"I am – just being around them has already lowed your IQ three points. And, at your level, you really can't afford to loose that many."

He did the I'm-trying-to-be-serious-here thing again. Little Jake's actually growing up... tear... "No, I mean Sam's pack apparently thinks you were being serious the other day."

Oh. Well. That's not good. "Of all the times in the world to start taking me seriously, they chose then?" Sam was, apparently, a bigger idiot then I thought. I'd no idea that was even possible.

"Oh, yes. They were asking me before class – quite loudly, I might add – how on earth I managed to get you to let me touch you, how Seth was doing with it, and – my favourite – whether you insulted me during sex too."

I shook my head. This only resulted in be being able to smell Jake better, all pine and musk and male. Must shut off brain. Must sleep. For the love of all things werewolf, I must stop thinking. "Oh, really?"

"Yes, and as a result the whole Senior class has come to believe we're dating."

"Stupid seventeen-year-olds." And then, now curious, "What on earth did you say to Quil and Embry to make people think that?"

"I told them it was none of their damn business," then he yawned himself.

"The whole Rez will know about it by next week," I groaned. Me and my big mouth... And the Rez with nothing more exciting going on then high school drama. It would have been god-damn hilarious though if it'd happened to anybody but me.

"I know. Isn't it great?" I didn't see what was so great about it myself, but he told me. "Dad has to give up trying to set me up now."

"Whoop-de-do for you." Then, "Knowing your luck, he'll either see through it, or decide I'm not good enough for you."

"Nah. He likes you."

Does he now? "Since when?"

He shrugged and yawned again, "Since always? Anyway... night Leah."

"Don't you dare fall asleep without letting go of me Jacob Black." But he did. "Wake up you idiot and let go of me!" But he didn't.

And that was how I ended up spending the night in Jake's arms.


	11. Mu

"It was you who made me understand that under the dullness there are things so  
fine and sensitive and delicate that even those I most cared for in my other life look cheap in comparison.  
I don't know how to explain myself […] but it seems as if I'd never before understood with how much that is  
hard and shabby and base the most exquisite pleasures may be paid."

Countess Ellen Olenska in Emma Wharton's The Age of Innocence

* * *

Against every concept of common sense, I was winning. Which was to say, I had somehow managed to land on Park Place and all for railroads, and the Crystal Ball only had a handful of properties. Even Bella had more. But I had all the money, and her property was mortgaged, and there was the scent of Italian food drifting from the kitchen, and it would be all mine while Jake was out running patrol and Seth was back at La Push, trying to do our laundry.

They had asked me, naturally, to do it, because I was the girl and apparently girls did these sorts of things for her brother and the boy everyone thought she was dating. I told them, quite emphatically, that if they wanted clean clothes so god-damn much, to stop getting them dirty in the first place.

"That'll be $450, Madam Zeroni."

"It's Alice, mutt."

"And I still don't care... though it does look like you don't have enough cash... I'll take Oriental Avenue off your hands, if you want." She flung the "deed" at me so hard it cut my palm where I caught it. "That was just plain rude. Did they not teach you any fucking manners in the asylum?" I had come to know entirely too much over the last couple of weeks about the vampires. And, while I may have knitted and played monopoly with them, that didn't mean I wouldn't insult them about their pasts.

"Leah," Bella tried to mediate. I didn't care for it. I mean, not only did she choose an Undead American over a warm-blooded mammal like Jake, but she was letting her own father think she was dying of a tropical disease in Atlanta, allowing said father to try to work his way into my mother's pants with his sorrow. Siblings in our parents fucking us over we may be, I would never, ever, be the buddy she seemed to think was. Still, she looked from me to her demon child, who was sitting adjacent to her, as if I was some stupid infant to be reasoned with. Said child was two-weeks old, looked closer to six months, could read at a college level and talk at the same when she so chose, and owned all the red and orange properties. I fought back the desire to point out that I was twenty-one, she was nineteen, and I'd graduated high school without any help at all from bloodsuckers who'd spent their eternal lives acing the same classes over and over.

So instead I said sugar-crystals-on-my-tongue sweetly back, "Isabella?"

"Don't curse in front of Renesmee please."

I almost let myself say, "Don't give your kid a name people will beat her up for," but I actually kinda liked the half-human freak and didn't want her to think I was being rude to her. So instead, "Oh, yuh, of cusse Mistress, sorrie Mistress. Leah won't ebeh do it again, Mistress. Wudd you like me t'brigg you your tea 'n cakes now, Mistress?"

She rolled her eyes – a human gesture that wasn't forced with her, or done based off of intense algorithmic calculations into what looked the most human – and handed her daughter the dice. "No, that'll be fine."

We continued to play for another half-hour, Sargent Pepper watching what I was told was a Malay-language news show in the background while the others were reading or knitting or whatnot, before there was a knock at the door.

I looked up, surprised. This hadn't happened before. Never. We all looked towards Alice, who shook her head and told us it must be a wolf, because she'd seen no one coming. I prepared myself for the worst, possibly ending with me explaining to Charlie why I'd murdered my ex in the Cullen's living room. The room did need colour, but not that badly... So imagine all our surprise when it was Charlie who was standing there, not a pack come to attack and destroy the Lock Ness Monster.

Crap.

No one really knew what to say – after all, they were supposed to be at CDC, at dying Bella's bedside, not watching her play monopoly with her daughter and her mortal enemy – so I spoke up. "Hey, Charlie. What brings you here?"

Instead of answering like a normal person (this must be were Bella got it from), "You too Leah?"

"Me too what?"

Charlie looked behind him, and I did too, rather curious to see who Edward was giving the evil eye. Jake was standing there, hands in his pockets, looking only slightly sheepish. "Jacob Isaiah Black," I hissed, jumping up from the game, not caring what pieces I knocked over, "tell me you didn't."

He shrugged as he moved further into the room, dragging Charlie with him. One of the vampires, thinking clearly, muted the Singapore Morning News. "I did."

"We have to go," I called back to the vampires as I started pulling my stupid, idiotic, brain-dead Alpha out the door, "btw, Nessie can have my properties and money."

As soon as we were out the door and in the yard, I let go of his hand and spun on him, standing so close that the finger I shook at him occasionally hit his nose. "What on God's green earth did you think you were doing, Black?" I shouted at him. "I mean, what part of secret fucking identity do you not understand? You could've-"

He grabbed my finger and lowered it after it hit his nose a third time. He didn't let go, just held it real tight between us as he said, "Charlie didn't deserve to be left out there hanging, not ever knowing what happened to his daughter."

"What happened to his daughter is that she chose to run off with a vampire rather then deal life like the rest of us!"

"I know that!" he yelled right back. I'd not been this close to him since the other night, where we'd fallen asleep on each other. Neither of us had addressed it. We'd not talked about the rumours I'd let start about the two of us either. Or about the fact that Carlisle has been drawing my blood like every day for like two weeks in attempt to track something in my blood that he won't tell me about because it'll mess up his children's bet (Rosalie and Emmett are each on it as well, with Christmas from the later and New Years for the former), whatever it was. "But he deserves to know she's not dying."

"Only because she's already dead!"

"Well, duh – but that's not his fault."

"I-" I started, then stepped back, unable to be that close to him. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I'd known Jake for ages. We were friends. He was kinder to me then most of the other wolves had been in the old pack. He smelled amazingly nice, and was a drool-worthy sight as both man and wolf. But I couldn't deny that I found myself wanting to spend time around him, or that, for all my complaining, I'd fallen asleep in his arms while we were both minimally clothed and blanketed. Weakly now, "Why did you tell him? What exactly did you tell him?" My voice grew loud again, and the venom of my anger was undeniable. "You were supposed to be patrolling, not making a God-damned social call." And quietly again, as if my vocal cords were on a roller coaster. "I thought you said you were over Bella Swan."

"I am," he said calmly. "I told you that. Ages ago. Your memory's going, old woman."

Icily now, "I. Am. Twenty-one. That is not old. Just old enough to see how idiotic you are." I spun on my feet and marched into the woods, pulling off my clothes and letting them fall where they landed. I phased mid-step and hit the ground running. And fuming.

I was only angry because he was being stupid. He'd left without telling me, leaving our land unprotected. Sam's pack (I needed to think of a better name for them then that. The La Push Gang? What would that make us though, the Vampire's Puppies?) could have come and tried to attack us. And since it was just me and the Cullens here while Seth was on the Rez doing the laundry, it would have just been us fighting, and they might've hurt Nessie. Or Esme, who never hurt anybody. Or Alice. Hell, I think I'd have been angry if they'd hurt Rosalie too. But anyway. It was irresponsible. He was supposed to be the Alpha! He couldn't just run off like that. Not without telling me. If he had to do something, even as idiotic as telling Charlie who knew exactly what, he could have at least told me so I could have run his patrol.

And why did he have to got and tell Charlie anyway. Yeah, it might stop him moping, for a while, but once he found out she was a vampire, who knew what shoes would fall from the damned Closet of Fate, which liked to plunk her hiking boots on my head? He'd still be sad. Or angry. Or start hanging around. Or disown her, which would break her icy little heart. Or, worse, want to become one too, which would break Mom's. I couldn't let Jake's mistake ruin Mom's happiness, not even if it was with the bitch's dad. If he could just think these things ahead...!

And he'd said he was long over the latest Mrs. Cullen. He said they were just friends. Betraying your tribe's ancient, fur-ridden secret to an outsider just so he could hang with his fanged daughter was not something you did for people who you were over. I wouldn't do squat for Sam. Other then maybe put flowers on his mom's grave – Mrs. Uley was amazing – but that wasn't anywhere near the amazing level of stupidity Jake had risen to this time.

He's only seventeen the annoying part of my brain urged, the part that I'm sure had caused me to dream of rainbow-coloured wolves and thought he smelled nice.

He's the Alpha. The Chief of the Quiluetes. He can't be making mistakes like this.

If it's a mistake the annoying part said back to me. I didn't think it could get worse, but apparently my brain was insisting on being a bitch to itself. That's why you have to help him.

Why fucking me? 'Cause I'm the girl? 'Cause being a werewolf ruined my life and I've no other use for it? 'Cause its either that or lifetimes of monopoly with Ms Icy-Hot and her demon child?

'Cause you can, it insisted. Stupid brain. Why couldn't it just ignore me, like everybody else in the world does? I'd be happy then, if I didn't have to think about how much life sucked. I really think I would be.


	12. Nu

"You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love 'til it kills you both.  
You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other 'til it makes you quiver,  
but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains, children, it's blood -  
blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch,  
but at least I'm man enough to admit it."

Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Lover's Walk"

* * *

I ran until I was five miles past tired. I ran until I was exhausted. I ran, and I ran, and I ran, as if running would solve all my problems, and somewhere, buried deep in my psyche, was the Leah that wasn't human. The part of me that was a middling-sized grey wolf, with no knowledge of stupid boys and stupid rocks without cable and knew vampires only as mortal enemies and nothing of their skills at monopoly, just begging to be psychoanalysed. The Alpha female. The Beta of this pack.

This Leah instinctively knew what to do. This Leah would know why I was angry at Jake, for more then just the Charlie/Bella thing. Why I smelled different since the new pack had started. Why Jake and I suddenly were getting that tension I'd rather ignore, because it'd ruin everything. Why I was putting up with the bloodwhores. Why I felt warmer then usual when he'd stood that close to me. Why I was, even now, fantasising about the arms that had held me.

But I couldn't find that Leah. No matter how hard I ran, and let myself fall into my inner beast, the monster inside me wasn't willing to take over me, because, no matter how odd of a pack we might be, it was still my pack and wolves were, after all, social creatures. The wolf in me couldn't rise to the surface, because no wolf could ever feel and stupidly angry and angrily stupid and alone as I felt right now. Lost. I didn't know why I was here, not really, only that I'd rather be with Jake then Sam. I was here to take care of Seth, but in some ways he was more mature then I was, and didn't insult everything in sight, and actually liked vegetables. It seemed to be Jake I was actually taking care of, because he'd big ideas in his head about the packs and the tribes and the vampires, and forgot about things like eating and sleeping. He'd never known what it was to not know where your future was heading, to have to stop thinking ahead more then a day because doing more just hurt too much to bear, to not know your purpose in life. I'd been in his head. He knew why he did what he did. He knew he was doing something worthwhile with his life, something unique in the universe. His problem was knowing if he was strong enough to do all he dreamed. He'd never had the terrible, isolated feeling of being unable to dream any more.

Gods above and devils below, I was lost. If I believed truly in God as anything other then an instrument of my misery, I'd pray for some sort of understanding. If I remembered any of the rituals and beliefs of the Quiluetes, I'd try them and beg for idiotic things to stop happening to me. A deal with the devil would be preferable to staying, unloved and unwanted and unappreciated and un-everything-else, in this small Pacific Coast Rez, where nothing ever changed, only got more run down, and the sun never shined, and everyone worth anything but us werewolves left to go to school in Seattle or get married in Hawaii or get real jobs or whatever else people in the real world did with their lives.

I felt hot tears well in my eyes, and at that point I returned to my rock rather then run and risk coming across someone from the other pack or Jake or Seth on border patrol see me. Luckily the rock, den, whatever was empty of the others, and I could mope in peace there.

But, really, was it too much to ask to life to make sense? My wants were simple things: a place to stay and safety and security from what was outside, and a sense of purpose. I just wanted to know I was doing something with my genetically cursed life. I couldn't be a mother. I was a failure as a daughter and a sister. My hopes of achieving anything were null. All I had going for me was the werewolf thing, and normal werewolves didn't spend their time playing board games with vamps.

But that didn't help me figure out why I was so angry at Jake. Nothing did. It was all I could do to curl up on my sleeping bag and think about other things then how much I hated my life.

I thought instead about high school, how bright and glorious things had seemed then. The world was full of opportunity, and I'd a plan for my life then. I think everyone is hopeful in high school.

I knew what classes Jake was taking better then I did Seth, even though I'd been the one to register my brother.

With the werewolf connection, I shared about equally the two boys' thoughts, but I could tell you better what Jake had said to Embry about me, about how, yes, the physical parts of me were great, but he enjoyed just hanging with me too, even though happy-go-lucky Seth had actually yelled at some of the boys from the other pack to get their heads out of the gutter about me.

I checked to make sure Seth had had a good day at school, and done his homework, and expressed awe over grades like it seemed the Alpha female of this tribe was expected to do, but it was Jake I looked forward to seeing when they got back. He was the reason why I headed in the afternoons to Leech Landing, to be forced into knitting, or watching foreign news channels or Dr. Phil, or listen to Nessie think-talk to me about how The Lion King is the Disney version of Hamlet as we try to get her to do normal kid-like things, or play every game Milton-Bradley ever made – because they took the Rabbit to school and parked it in Doctor Dracula's driveway and I could see them that much sooner.

I had teased Sam with Jake not just because Jake was the one person who could most get under his skin, but because everything I had said was true, one way or the other. And because no one else had even popped into my head to tease Sam about – not some made up imprint, not some boy we'd gone to school with, not one of the other werewolves, - just Jake.

My head bolted straight up from my forepaws, upon which it had been dolefully resting. I could see my snout wrinkly with disbelief and displeasure even as the thought hit me, overwhelmingly, brightly, undeniably, and, worst of all, irrevocably:

I was in love – or, at least, serious like – with Jacob Black.

Shoot me now. Silver bullet, please.

It wasn't imprinting – I'd spent enough time around those glaze-eyed idiots to know this wasn't that – but the good, old-fashioned type of... serious like. I had fallen against all odds for my younger brother's best friend, and all because we treated each other like shit most the time and somehow managed to be decent to each other the rest.

I had to do something to stop this. For the good of the pack. I would have to-

A duffel bag came flying into the den. It landed right by my feet. He-who-I-must-not-think-about soon followed. "Seth's back."

I cocked my head to the side, as if to say, "Is he?"

"Yea. He says your mom stopped him from turning some of it pink. And he might have shrunk some things. But at least it's clean."

I blinked. I hope he took it to mean, "Great. Now get the hell out of my sight."

He didn't. "I'm sorry I took off like that, Leah."

This time my blinks were of surprise.

"I just got the idea, and I knew you were at the Cullens, and I didn't want one of them to try to stop me, so I just went ahead and did it – I know, I know, it was stupid, but it needed to be done."

I plopped my head atop the duffel bag. Translation: "It went well then?"

"Bella didn't eat Charlie or anything, and he seems to be doing okay with it. He knows we're werewolves, but doesn't know about Sam's pack. And I think he knows something different's up with them, but doesn't want to know any details. I think he'll figure it out if they stick around long enough, but he should be able to handle it by then, I think."

Great. Just what we needed. The vamps hanging around for a while more. I gave a sharp bark, wanting him to leave me alone.

"Don't be mad, Lee." Jake sat down on the duffel, near my head, and reflexively stroked my head. It felt both weird and kinda nice. The vamps must leave, and soon, so things can go back to normal and I can stop thinking thoughts like this. It's all due to such close proximity and high tension and hormones. It's not real. Not in the least. I'll get over it, and he'll never have to know. "I know something that should make you happy."

I twitched my ears.

"Seth ran into Dad at your house. I've been ordered to come home for dinner tonight, and invited to sleep in my bed for once. Apparently, you're welcome to join me for both." And already word had spread to Billy. Next thing you know Mom would be airing her wedding dress and sending bridal magazines to my rock. Parents got so worked up over their kids' (supposed) relationships. "So, you wanna come?"

Errrrr, no.

He seemed to sense this. "Oh, come on Leah. It'll be fun. Paul and Rachel'll be there, and we can annoy the crap out of them, and make up things for them to send back to Sam, and get a free meal out of it."

This in no way enticed me.

Okay, I lied. The free food did. But I was a werewolves, and I thought with my stomach.

"Maybe Dad will even let us break into the beer." Waggling his eyebrows in a way that did not transfer over into wolf very well but worked amazing when he was in all his human glory, "If I get drunk enough, you might even get lucky."

I laughed. This was why I was falling in love with him, even if I didn't want to be. He said things like that. Such stupidly sweet and idiotic things like that.

I still waited for him to turn around before phasing and finding an outfit passable enough to wear to the Rez amongst our pile of things. I couldn't stop myself from watching as he changed into a clean shirt, even though I'd seen him without one a thousand times. It was just to prove to myself I felt nothing when I looked at him.

It didn't work.


	13. Xi

"I'm sorry 'bout the attitude I need to give when I'm with you,  
but no one else would take this shit from me, and I'm so terrified of no one else but me.  
I'm here all the time; I won't go away."

Matchbox Twenty "Long Day"

* * *

I was frantically trying to tame my hair was we headed to La Push in the Rabbit. I'd flipped down the passenger-side visor and was trying to make sure I didn't look like the cheapest version of a street-walking whore ever to exist.

"I'm trying to drive here," Jake admonished, when I tried attacking his hair after I'd given up on mine.

"And I'm fucking trying to make you look presentable. It's harder then it sounds."

"It's only Billy, Leah."

"And I'm supposed to have been taking care of you guys. And right now it looks like you decided to smoke the soap rather then use it."

He rolled his eyes at me, then turned back to the road. "I think Seth and I are grown enough to try to wash ourselves. Though," he said, turning to look at me again, and shaking his head when he saw I'd gone back to trying to pick the bits of leaf out of my hair, "I'd not be opposed if you wanted to join me..."

Jake had to stop saying things like that. It made it harder for me to try to ignore the heat inside me. "You wanna pull over so I can give you and your hand some 'personal time,' O mighty Alpha?"

"Ah, Lee, I didn't know you wanted to help so bad."

I thought over what I'd said. "Dipshit," I punched him, "you know what I meant!"

"I know what you meant. Freudian slip. I knew you were hot for me."

"Bastard."

"Bitch."

"Ass."

"Whore."

"Idiot."

"Idiot? I'm not the one freaking out about my hair when it's only Billy and Rachel."

"And Paul."

"Yes, but I try to forget him."

"That may be difficult to do; he is doing your sister."

He groaned – and I felt myself grow warmer still as he did - "That was the part I was trying to forget."

"Hard to when you walk in on them-"

"I don't want to talk about this. Can't we talk about something less disgusting? Like sewage systems. Or the colour pink. Or Nazis. Can't we talk about Nazis for a while?"

"I'm only saying that Billy thinks we're dating 'cause Sam can't keep his wide-assed mouth shut, and I don't want to spend all evening listening about how I should be taking better freaking care of you."

"Again, seventeen, not seven."

"It's the TV's fault."

"What?" Jake laughed. It was a sexy laugh. I tried not to think about it. Stupid hormone-induced desires. Must get rid of them. Must-

"The TV's fault," I dead-panned. "It tells me a proper girlfriend is supposed to make sure her boyfriend doesn't look like he's been sleeping in the woods, and I'm doing to damn well do it."

"Because the TV said so?"

I shrugged. We were almost there anyway. "It's turned my mind into tapioca. I must obey."

"Even though we're only pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend?"

"It just means I have to work harder at it." I was a failure at everything else. I'd see to it that I kept our pack fed and in school if it was the last thing I did. Which it might be, because it'd probably be the only thing I ever did with the rest of my life. Besides this whole forget how nice Jake is when we're not insulting each other. God, I hope we got to Billy's soon. I was getting hungry.

"You've got some serious issues, Clearwater."

We were pulling into Billy's driveway now. Thank God. Couldn't stop myself from muttering, "So they tell me," under my breath as I pulled out the tray of cookies Esme had forced upon us so we wouldn't show up empty handed from the back seat. More loudly, "You ready to act like love-drunk idiots and make Billy's day?"

He held out a hand, which I, reluctantly (or so I tell myself) took, "Sure, sure." His hand was larger even then mine, and burning with the werewolf heat, and strong. His fingers lacing into mine was almost more then I could bear, and it was only strict shouting at myself to remember myself that I didn't jump on him then and let him figure out I liked him that way. Because it was just a superficial like that would go nowhere and achieve nothing. I'd be over it in a week or two. I still smiled at him though.

The door opened before we'd gotten to the landing, revealing Billy with a great big – and I mean ginormous – smile on his face. "There's the prodigal son." Then he turned to me and I freaked out a little – because he seemed to be radiating freaking happiness as his grin managed to somehow get bigger. "And my daughter."

And we'd not even gotten through the door yet. I feared what would come when we sat down for dinner.

"God, Dad," Jake said, forcing past his father and collapsing on the couch. This had the effect, as he'd not let go of my hand yet (and not vice versa), of pulling me into the room as well. And seating me close enough to Jake that I got another good whiff of that pine scent I really need to stop thinking about. He put an arm around me, causal-like, and I let myself imagine for a minute that it wasn't all for Billy's benefit. That Jake might like me back. That this didn't all have to end in tragedy.

But it was my life, so of course it had to end badly. Because there was no way that anyone would ever like me that way, not with me the bitter old crone I'd become. And what I felt anyway was purely a physical reaction to the close presence of a nice-looking, very masculine boy and my own whacked-up hormones. He was my Alpha. It could never work.

Unless...

No, not thinking. Not at all.

"So, Dad, what was with the summons? Miss me that much?"

"Is is such a crime for a guy to want to meet his son's girlfriend?"

I resisted rolling my eyes. "You've known me my whole life, Mr. Black."

"Yes, still..." His stupid smile didn't fade. I could only guess the cable had gone out and he'd missed out on his soaps this week, because he'd certainly not acted this way when he'd found out about Rachel and Paul. Probably because Paul was a jackass with the mental acuity of a rubber duck. I guess that made me less then a bitch then Paul in Billy's eyes. So, go me. I must be doing something right. "Tell an old man how you two got together?"

Was he serious? I looked at Jake, who seemed to have predicted this response from his father, because he merely pressed me closer against his (quite nice) side and said, "We were patrolling together and she just jumped me. Things kinda went from there."

I just jumped him, did I? Make me out to be a slut in front of your father why don't you? I'll show you jumping – and my left hook. Just wait 'til we get back to my rock...

Then it got worse. Billy asked, "Are you two being careful?" Seriously. He asked that. If Jake replied, "There are condom wrappers littering the Cullen land," I was going to rip him a new one. No matter how much I enjoy looking at how he is now.

I really must stop thinking like this. Jake is a boy. And a friend. And my Alpha. That's it. This is just hormones. I should just get a vibrator and all this will be over and done with in a week.

Before Jake had anything to do then give a shocked nod (I guess he'd not expected this from his father either), Billy interrupted. "Well, you've gotta stop."

Jake just blinked. I managed an, "Excuse me?"

"Being responsible. You've got to stop it – don't look at me like that, I'm an old man. I want grand-kids while I'm still young enough to enjoy them."

Jake was sputtering now.

I decided to have some fun. "It's hard to raise a kid on two werewolves' salaries. It doesn't exactly pay much."

Waving it off, "I've a pension," as if that would fix everything. It might at least be able to get us an apartment. I'd do Jake if it meant that I'd a better place then my rock to sleep- mustn't think that way. Think of evil things: vegetables, Sam, vampires, Sam, being a menopausal werewolf, Sam, imprinting, mind-readers-

"Well, we'll try then," I smiled sweetly at him. "But I make no guarantees."

Jake seemed to force his brain into working mode then, 'cause he looked at me rather then his dad when he said, "I'm sure you've a dusty egg lingering up there somewhere." He even patted my shoulder knee with his free hand.

"You're such a sweetheart," I said dryly. "So, where's Paul and Rach?" Already off making the first set of grandchildren for Billy? God, I hope not. I'm already scared for life from their earlier display.

"More importantly, what's for dinner?"

"They're out picking it up now."

For some reason, this set off alarms in my head. It wasn't like adults not to have the food ready. They're usually ultra-prepared for everything. And Paul not being here was somewhat worrisome. Rachel, I'd know idea where she was, but Paul could be anywhere.

I shifted a little, to get a better look at Jake, and found him looking at me too. Something's not right here, his dark, ridiculously brown eyes seemed to say to me, even as mine looked right back and said, He wouldn't just invite us over to annoy us, would he?

We seemed to process our mutual messages at the same time: It's a distraction. They were going after the Cullens. And Seth was all alone there, without either of us to watch out for him.

Without so much as a word to Billy or each other, we both leapt from the couch and ran out to the Rabbit. If any of Sam's pack so much as touched Seth, there would be hell to pay.


	14. Omicron

"That's what I want in my life […] something worth fighting for."

Eric in Wonderfalls: "Lying Pig"

* * *

"Can't this damn thing drive any faster?"

"Well, Clearwater, I am going eighty in a thirty-five, but if you think you can run faster..."

"I would say something, but everything I can think of somehow ends in you mocking me for how 'fast' I am."

"I wasn't going to say anything..." he said in a way that implied that he would have, "though I did wonder what the application packet for Playboy was doing on your desk."

"If I didn't want you swerve off the road and have us die in a fiery ball of pain, I'd hit you right now."

"Ah, Leah, I didn't know you cared."

"I'm in the car too, sphincter."

"I take my victories where I can."

I seriously considered punching him at the moment, but instead leaned forward and pointed, "There's the turn-off to the Manor."

He shoved my hand distractedly from his line of sight before griping the emergency break. "I saw this once in a Jason Statham movie," he told me entirely unreassuringly. "You might want to hold on."

Hold on? Hold on? My nails were already biting into the plastic of the door. I couldn't hold on much tighter if I tried. "Jake, if you kill me, I'm never speaking to you again."

"If I'd known that's all it'd've taken to shut you up..." and then, without slowing, he pulled on the parking break, jammed the steering wheel all the way to one side, and forced the car into a sharp turn. Once the front wheels were on the narrow drive, he did just the opposite. The car dove-tailed a little, the back end refusing to get back under control, and I swore my life flashed in front of my eyes. It was kinda depressing.

"Oh my God, I'm alive," I breathed. "How is that even fucking possible?" And then, because I really didn't want to see Seth get his lily-ass beaten to a pulp by werewolves I'd be then forced to kill – or worse, have him saved by vampires, who I'd then have to be nice to, - I forced my way over my seat and into the back. And then started pulling off the dress I'd been wearing. I rather wanted to keep it – it was the longest I owned, coming fully an inch above my knees.

"Not that I'm not grateful for the invitation, can't the you're-so-amazingly-awesome,-I-can't-believe-we're-still-alive sex wait until after we've saved the day?"

I flipped him the finger, which he probably didn't see, and flung the back door open ("Hey, you'll ruin the paint," he admonished, tree limbs indeed brushing loudly against the open door). Then I did the most idiotic thing I've probably ever done, short of falling in love with my Alpha: I jumped out of the car.

Granted, I did phase before I landed, but it was still a lot of pain on my paws that I had to run through. Seth. Where are you? Are you okay? Is Sa-?

The West Spur. The border of "our" land and the Cullens' then. Not good. I can smell the other pack. They're not that far out.

By all that was holy, we'd made it in time. I'll be there in a second. Jake's parking the car. And possibly warning the leeches.

Oh. Good. A pause. Mind telling me what's going on?

What do you think's going on, you wart-chewing mushroom-vendor? Behind us are "veggie" vampires and their half-breed spawn. In front of us are werewolves. One is the natural enemy of the other. I always knew my brother was going to win a Darwin Award... but what I actually told him was, Divide and conquer. Get rid of one Alpha and one Beta and all you've got is a... I paused, what are you? Does that make you the Omega, or just a Gamma?

Not helping Lee.

I was starting too smell them too – and was struck by how much they smelled like ocean, at least compared to us. Maybe that's what the bloodsuckers had been talking about: we were a different pack, so we smelled different. Piney, since we were farther away from the ocean. I was such a homebody, it'd effected me the most, but it was starting to effect Jake too (hadn't I noticed it just the other day?) and had effected Seth the least 'cause he kept going back to La Push to visit Mom and stuff. Ha. I'm smarter then a Walking Dead doctor. Go me – and knew I was close. I could just make out Seth, in a fighting stance, inside the border. His sandy fur was doing an impression of hackles raised as I'm sure mine was too (there was enough girl left within me to be angry at this, especially after the drama of trying to get it untangled in the first place) and every now and then he'd bare his teeth towards the murky distance. One is easier to fight then three, Seth.

The Cullens-

We're too far out for the mind-raper to hear us, and by the time we'd be close enough it'd probably already be too late.

He gave a little whine. Why would Sam do that? The Cullens've never heart anybody.

It seemed that I knew more about the leeches then my brother did. Or, at least, the reality of what it meant. I knew some of their backgrounds. I knew they didn't just magically come upon some of their fighting skills. And some members of PETA might have something to say about their dining habits. They're afraid, Seth. People destroy the things they don't understand. I moved to stand just in front of him, growling at the beasts I smelt in the shadows.

God, when did you get so wise?

I've always been wise, I quipped, waiting, you've just been too dumb to notice.

And then the wolves came, trotting out from their hidey-holes, hanging back about a foot from the border. The silver-black wolf I knew to be Paul looked surprised to see me – well, all of them did, but none so much as him.

The largest of the wolves, Sam, came to stand right across from me, and made a strange, shaking movement with his head that I took to mean, "Phase so we can talk."

My growl deepened. Not in a million lifetimes, you nut-chewing butt-cleaver.

I felt Jake phase in the distance. He can't hear you, you know.

It makes me feel better, I told him, while Seth did a, Jake, I'm so glad you're here, that, you might notice, he didn't do for me. Just feel the freaking love here, people. I jumped out of a fucking car for him! The least I could get is a, "Hi, Leah. I'm so glad you're hear to save my lily-ass." But do I? No? Why? Because I'm stuck in a low-budget bromance with no hope of ever getting laid myself. It's awful.

Edward and Jasper are on the way; I'm right behind them. Try not to do anything stupid, okay, Leah?

Oh, yes, because I'm the one likely to do something stupid. On the grand scale of stupidity, I think falling for Jake still falls somewhere above telling a vampire's father we're his child's mortal enemies. Aye, Captain my Capitan, I said blithely and continued to glare at Sam.

We stayed like this for a minute or so, but it turns out those vampires are freaking fast, and I was shocked to discover the mind-reader falling into one of those West-Side-Story-crouches to my right, and Jasper doing a slightly – slightly – less girly one on Seth's other side.

"Sam seems to be of the impression that Billy was inviting you and Jake tonight."

He did... and then Jake and I were troubled by the lack of food.

"Leah would like you to know that next time you enlist Billy in your doings, you should probably inform him first."

Oh, yes, just edit my words you circus freak-show why don't you. Wait- Billy didn't know?

The vampire gave a quick jerk of his head.

Well, that's good. I'd hate to have to kill Jake's dad. I'm okay with killing Paul.

I'll bail you out afterwards, Jake assured me, his surprise palpable that Billy had rather side with his own son then with those who wanted to destroy Renesmee.

"Leah feels that Paul should not have gone behind his future father-in-law's back in such a manner."

What are we?Girls? I'll show you what I 'feel' you ice sculpture-

"Sam expresses his need to speak with you about the destruction of my daughter."

Tell him he can bite my furry ass. Use those words.

"Leah denies."

'Denies' you blood-whoring Bambi-killing freak? No matter how stupid your daughter's name is, I'm not going to let Sam try to hurt her over it.

"Jacob will be here momentarily. Until then, Leah has full diplomatic digression."

Stop talking and just beat Sam into a bloody pulp for interfering in my life again.

Seth saw fit to add his two cents in, I think it was Renesmee's life he was trying to interfere in.

I think we can knock Ambassador out of possible careers for your sister, Seth.

"Leah would ask your pack to kindly back away from our lands."

That sounds like a plan. Just ask them to leave. And then we can go back to the manor and have a tea party.

We did miss dinner.

Shut up Jake and run faster.

"Sam would prefer to stay until Jacob arrives."

I'll fight the pansy. Anyone who wants to hurt a child can't be that tough.

"That is agreeable with us, though we would still like you to send some of your pack away. We've no interest in fighting any of you, especially the younger ones."

I can't believe he brought the younger kids out for this.

Jake was just a bend in the path behind us. This is Sam we're talking about. He'd fight with an army of children if he thought it'd help his chances. If I was in his place, I'd keep them from phasing as much as possible until they were old enough to take care of themselves.

He's gonna get them killed, I agreed.

"Jacob invites those who would care to join is pack to do so."

I knew even as the bloodsucker was saying it that this was not the thing to say to Sam, and I wasn't even in the jerk's mind any more. But I saw him flex his forearms just a second before I acted – and maybe it was because I was beginning to like the Cullens in some deep, deep disturbed part of my psyche; maybe it was my don't-let-anyone-(especially-the-kids)-get-hurt damned maternal instinct spilling over; maybe I was just insane – and lunged sideways at Edward, actually surprising enough to knock him off balance, and Sam to fly harmlessly over him.

Sam spun on me in an instant though, and I jumped back to my feet, growling. This means war, you mother-fucking son of a whore. I'm going to enjoy ripping your throat out and trampling it.

And then he lunged.


	15. Pi

"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."

Confucius's Analects

* * *

When I say I'm titchy as a wolf, I mean it. I did my reading once upon a time, and at four feet tall and almost twice that long, I would be considered a giant if I was a "normal" wolf. But not among werewolves. Nearly all the guys are bigger then me, with the minor exception with the freshmen who phased around the time of The Great Vampire-Lycan Battle of last year. Sam is the largest wolf I've ever seen, with the exception of Jake (I will not drool here), who I swear is still growing; he is easily five feet at the shoulders and nine feet from nose to his fuzzy little feather duster tail. And, also thanks to a little thing called "sexual dimorphism," which I prefer to call "the universe royally screwing me over yet again," I know that I am less well-muscled and my legs are comparatively shorter.

But I also know that I am faster, more agile, and almost a thousand times smarter then he is.

Sam lunged.

I ducked, trying to protect the soft squishy parts of my underside, raising my claws to rake across his. I missed, but so did he. And I managed to rake one of his back legs. And first blood to Clearwater.

As if from a great distance, I heard Jake and my brother shouting. God damn it! - that was certainly Jake – while Seth was going, Hey, jerk, leave my sister alone!

And then I saw the problem with my manoeuvre: I was pressed against the ground, and he had landed on all four paws. The only way I could wiggle away would be to roll over, but exposing my belly to my manic depressive ex was something that distinctly sounded like a bad idea, even in my head. Shit, shit, shit. Sam was too close now, and one sharp paw was lifting in my direction as I tried, unsuccessfully, to wiggle away. Shit, shit, holy fucking shit.

Where might you ask was Ed-weird, for whom I was now in this mess? Wasn't, you might also ask, he a sissy Victorian vampire man-child trained never to let a woman lift a paw for herself, think for herself, or even know the world was going to hell on the Red Eye around him? What about Mr. I-worship-at-the-altar-that-is-Dr.-Phil-McGraw? Hadn't he been there as well? Wasn't he some sort of Civil War solider? Didn't he spend most of his vampirical life, all hundred-and-sixty-something years, fighting mythical creatures, including and not limited to werewolves and other vampires? And weren't the Antebellum jerks supposed to be worse then the Victorians? Or were they the same...? I wasn't sure... And Seth, my sadly taller then me little brother, who seemed to have this idea in his head that it was him looking out for me and not the other way around? Should he, at the very least, been fighting at my side our tyrannical ex-Alpha?

Well, unfortunately for me and my soon-to-be-torn grey hide, Sam's lunge at the mind-reader seemed to have been taken by the majority of the other pack as a signal to attack. They were busy with the others, our old packmates, and I found myself worrying less about myself then about the young ones who were, after all, more cubs then battle-hardened wolves. And this really ticked me off. More then even Sam deciding to make fillet of Leah right here on this very unsanitary forest floor.

Instead of slicing me with his front claws, he used them to step closer to me and, in a vaguely disturbing when you thought about it move, bit down on my neck – like you'd do with pray, you know, to shake them dead.

I tried to curl up, ignoring the holy-mother-fucking-God pain that this caused, and kick out against his with my back legs, but, no matter how hard I kicked, I don't think he felt it – when he got angry, he'd never been able to think clearly, as Emily had come to discover – and it only managed to help him get a better grip on me.

Let's see, let's see... what do you do when you're being attacked by wolf significantly larger and heavier then you are? I think we covered this in the self-defence unit in sophomore PE... No, I'm serious, right before ballroom dancing and right after tennis. Oh, yes, SING: Stomach Instep Nose Groin. Well, stomach wasn't working very well was it... couldn't reach his nose... where is a god-damn werewolf's instep? Groin it is then... I'd rather hoped to avoid that part of Sam for the rest of my life. I shifted my back feet again – God-damn-ow! - and kicked again. And again. And again. May you never have puppies, you damn cock-sucking ass-wipe. Kick through the pain. Ignore the pain and curse and he might let go. Yes. No one's coming to save you. You have to fight for yourself. As always. So fight through the pain. That's for breaking up with me, I kicked. That's for shacking up with my cousin. That's for being the worst damn Alpha in existence, I think I felt his grip loosening, and I tried pulling away. I didn't get far, but I got somewhere, and continued to claw at him. That's for bringing the younger ones into this. And this,(yes, I was letting my "justifiable" anger problems spill over), is for the worst sex of my life.

And then I was free.

And then I saw why: while I'd not been paying attention, Jake had entered the fight. And he'd grabbed Sam by the leg I'd injured earlier and pulled backwards. I did mention how Jake is like the Mr. Universe of werewolves, right? Well, his abnormal growth was certainly paying off against Sam, for which I was very, very thankful, 'cause having my ex kill me is not something I want to explain to my father...

But, most interestingly, were the things that Jake was shouting at Sam, who most assuredly couldn't hear him, but I could. All the wolves (minus Paul and Jared, who were doing their own little fighting dances with Edward and Major Moody) had stopped what they were doing to watch the two Alphas fighting, and me on the sidelines, occasionally snapping at Sam to keep him in the "ring."

Anyway, through my random thoughts about how much I hated Sam right now (as opposed to the rest of the time) and my carefully suppressed thoughts of how hot Jake looked even as a wolf (danger, danger Will Robinson), I could hear his angry shouts to the unable to hear Sam: You retard, he shouted, as both he and Sam balanced on their hind legs, hackles raised and teeth bared, but it was Sam's ears that were pressed close against his head, haven't you hurt her enough already? Do you really think anything you could do here today could hurt her more then you already have? Or did you just want to see if you could do to Emily what you did to her?They were batting back and forth like wrestlers for while, getting and taking swipes that quickly healed on their forearms, and then, somehow, some way, Jake managed to get both paws behind Sam's ugly black head and, snarling right in his ear, press him to the ground. Why can't you get it through your head? Is it that full of shit? Why won't you just understand that I am the Alpha now and you were and always will be a cheap stand-in? He then went into the admittedly anti-American rant about how Ephraim Black's great-grandson was never meant to bow down to Levi Uley's, et cetera et cetera et cetera, followed by some very interesting ranting about using Billy as a distraction against his knowledge, and generally forcing him to probably ruin his engine because I was, apparently, going "mother-fucking-hen" about Seth's well being – all this while pinning Sam to the ground. And he kept pinning him down. Leah, he asked, are you alright?

Other then my neck killing me...

Seth?

I think one of these stupid squirrels through a pine cones at me... And, indeed, my brother was glaring upwards, towards the nearest branch, as if he might find the perp and fine him now. How hard had Mom dropped him on his head when he was a baby? Or was it just the LSD she'd been tripping on?

Jake turned back to yelling at Sam, You're lucky they're both okay. Dad doesn't have the money to bail me out of jail for killing you... Then he pulled his paws off of Sam and trotted over to my side, presumably to make sure I wasn't lying about my injuries. Edward, would you like to do the honours of kicking Sam off your land, or should I?

In the end, though, it wasn't necessary, because Jake's just casual walking away seemed to do the trick, and the other pack – every last one of them, starting with Quil, Embry, and the younger boys, just drifted away. And Sam, like every bully, saw that his gang was gone, he left too, giving a small whine as he ran away.

So, said Seth casually, in the immediate silence as the vampires ran away to tell their ice-cold spouses what heroes they'd been, how was Billy's?

Jake and I both rolled our eyes at him. He wants us to work on giving him grand-kids.

Cool, Seth the Retard answered for some reason known only to his almond-sized brain; what are you going to call them?

As one, Jake and I both turned and shouted at my brother as we made our way, slowly, bumping into each other in exhaustion, SETH!

But did my idiot brother learn? Noooooo... Cool. I always wanted a nephew named after me – hey! He shouted as I snapped at him, half-climbing over Jake to do it, What was that for?

You were being an idiot again.

Er, Leah, our Alpha interrupted nervously, you mind getting off of me? It amused me that, while he'd just beaten up Sam, I made him nervous. Cool.

I looked down and saw that, yes, I'd two paws on either side of Jake's back. I imagined, from a different angle, he'd look like one of those over-loaded pack animals you see in old movies. I'm the one Sam attacked. I think that means I deserve a piggy-back ride back to the rock.

Lee...

Oh, fine then, I clambered off as best I could, and gave a toothy yawn. I'm starving, but I think I'm more tired then hungry, and, rather then take the fork to the manor, headed straight toward the rock.

I understand... all the adrenaline from drifting the Rabbit and seeing you jump out of it have drained all the energy out of me.

I still can't believe we're alive.

Jake made it to the rock first, and sprawled on the first sleeping bag he came across. I couldn't rally the energy to clamber around him to mine, so I just flopped where I stood, landing with my head stretched across his back. I even let myself think for a moment how nice and piney he smelt, rather then the strange sea-salt of the other pack, as I closed my eyes. Oh, good, Jake said, noticing my head and rolling over so that we were facing each other (which forced my head from its comfortable position to by his own on the squishy sleeping bag), you remembered you owe me Oh-my-God,-we're-still-alive sex.

Jake... I said softly, fighting the part of me that was going "Oh, God, yes!" and the part that was telling me to punch him in the nuts for being so teenage boy.

I'm glad you're not hurt...

My neck twinged still, but that just proved what I'd always known: I was a pain in the neck, even my own. Me too...

I don't know what I'd've done if I let Sam hurt you again.

He was much too close now, and I could feel his breath on my muzzle, and I bet you he could feel mine. But he didn't move back. Neither did I. I don't know about him, but I didn't want to. He was warm and smelled soooo good and had just saved my life, possibly, and I knew that relationships based on intense experiences never worked out, but he didn't have to save me. Not while yelling at Sam for hurting me. I should have... where was my list of reasons why I should back away? I'd had it not that much earlier... imprinting... and him being younger... and wanting me to clean... I'm the one that knocked Edward out of the way. It was my fault he attacked me.

But still... I don't like to see you hurting...

More softly still, Jake... but he was moving closer now, if that was even possible, and even though my eyes were closed tight to convince myself this was all just a hormonally driven dream, I could feel him lick my muzzle. Slightly creepy, like the petting had been earlier, but, again, nice too. I couldn't deny a sound of lupine pleasure.

You mean a lot to me, Leah...

Please don't do this, I begged, not backing away, not moving at all except towards the sweet furball. You don't want to do this. You're just pumped full of adrenaline and-

I've liked you for a long time, Leah...

Don't do this, Jake... and then the thought that I tried to hide, the real thought that had kept me from pursuing any sort of relationship with anybody since Sam broke up with me... I'll ruin you... I ruined everything I touched. Maybe my relationship with Sam would have worked out if I'd been a better girlfriend. Maybe my dad would still be alive if I wasn't such a furry freak of nature. Maybe I'd have a chance, at anything, at being a better wolf, or a better daughter, or sister, or just being a better me and going to college or just fucking doing anything with my life, if I didn't seem hell-bent on burning all my bridges. All I was ever going to be was Leah freaking Clearwater, and I'd bring everyone around me down with me on my journey to hell...

No you won't. You're the most beautiful and honest person I've ever met. I want to be with you... I wasn't hearing this, I wasn't hearing this, this was all just a dream... now will you please phase so I can kiss you properly?


	16. Rho

"Only warriors choose how they will die, but that woman had given her life for love,  
and, perhaps, for her, love was a strange form of war."

Paulo Coelho's Brida

* * *

I swear I was hyperventilating.

This couldn't be happening. It just couldn't. The universe conspired against me. That's what it did. It hated me with a blinding passion that would have had it imprisoned if there was a jail big enough for it. It most emphatically did not do things I might wish it to. Like have Jake like me back. Like have Jake like me just when I've about convinced myself that the only thing I feel for him is a distinct appreciation for his muscles. And his male parts. And his way of joking with me. And the way he smells, so piney and earthy and real. And how he beat Sam into a fuzzy pulp.

Yet here he was, seemingly in as serious like with me as I was with him. Because he thought I was beautiful. Because he liked the way I argued with him.

Alright... I laughed meekly, you've had your fun. Where's the hidden cameras? Was it too much to hope that Seth hadn't phased at the manor yet and, instead of choosing to stuff his face, he'd overheard Jake and was coming to defend my honour? Not that it needed defending, but a good distraction was all the both of us needed... For both our sakes.

I'm being completely honest, he said, nuzzling my muzzle again. I pressed back, taking pleasure in the lupine action, no matter what my mind protested.

I... I had to protest. I had to stop this. But, for once, the mind that had given me so many good insults over the years had shut down.

(But he's not Sam, that stupid part of my brain that dreamed of neon orange werewolves claimed, the only part that seemed to be working at the moment, he's better then Sam. He loves you for you. He doesn't want you to change. He doesn't want you to look nice for his dad unless you want to. He doesn't tell you what to do. He just wants to love you. Why won't you let him?)

You can't stop imprinting.

Then I'll imprint on you.

You can't decide who you imprint on...

Then I'll be the first. He hadn't stopped nuzzling my head, and it was a ridiculous pleasure, one only canines could understand, but God, if he didn't stop I'd forget all my reason for saying no. I must run. I must run now. I must say no. I must be strong.

I...

(You say he's not Sam, stupid part of my brain that won't listen to reason and obviously does LSD behind my back, but it can't be real. I'd have known. I'd have noticed it before now. It'd have been in his thoughts. It's only physical. It's only superficial. It's caused by tense situations and close proximity. It's because I'm the only freaking girly wolf and he's the Alpha and our genes are saying, "Well, we've not a genetic defect on our hands; we must make them have sex," and this'll all end in failure and...)

I love you Leah... God no, God no, don't do this Jake. He's drunk – that's it, he's drunk. While I was out running to catch up with Seth, he parked the Rabbit and had a couple of beers before telling the Cullens that we were in danger and is now very, very drunk – that's what it is. He gave himself a beer enema and and I'm paying the consequences...

But do you know how freaking long its been since anyone's touched me like this? Even with Sam, it was awkward and forced and it'd never been anything (on my part, at least, I now realize) between us except the idea that we should like each other. He'd asked. I said yes. That's all it was. Convenience. Lack of better choices. But this...

I'd never been touched by a man I felt any real passion for. I'd never felt anything God-damn like this feeling coursing through me. My blood, I swear, was on fire. All the air had escaped me. All he was doing was giving me wolf-kisses and it was amazing and more satisfactory then anything anyone (coughSamcough) had ever done for me. Or to me. Because he hadn't wanted Sam to hurt me. Because he'd been willing, long before I was, to have his name tacked to mine. Because he was a bitch right back to me...

I... I said again, forcing myself to roll away. I phased as I did so, knowing I was naked, knowing that this was probably the stupidest mistake of my life, but wanting it so badly I didn't care, because I was in love with him and I was so God-fucking amazingly lonely, and because years without any sort of love at all was enough to make a person desperate, no matter who it was.

I rolled back towards him, and he was already phased back. The... desire in those dark brown eyes of his was ridiculous, and I'd have had a thousand insults on the tip of my tongue if I was watching some guy look at some girl like this on TV. But the look was for me and only for me. And, s..l...o...w...l...y, I let myself lean forward and press his lips against mine.

They were hot and sweet and, together, we deepened the kiss as my hand snaked around to cradle and pull his head closer to mine, while his went to pull my hips tight against him and explore carefully all that it could reach between us. And I could feel every muscle and every movement and every piece of flesh screaming for me as much as I seemed to be for him

I should not be doing this. He is under-age. He is my Alpha. He's my friend. This'll ruin everything good that I've managed to cobble together for myself here. I...

His hands (large, yes, and leaving trails of fire wherever they touched me, I swear) came to my breasts, and I gasped in his mouth – an action he took to full advantage, deepening the kiss still further, until I'd have been hard pressed to tell whose tongue was whose. And he was doing things, just simple exploratory-touching things, that made me feel not like a creature to be used but adored, and it was ridiculous because I just wanted to shout at him I didn't deserve to feel this way – that no one should touch me or be contaminated by the well of burning hatred that is me – but I couldn't, because his hands were tracing the curving lines of my shoulders, or my breasts, or the planes of my stomach, and taking such simple pleasure in just touching me and not asking for anything in return it should be illegal.

I found myself rolling him onto his back, and Jake didn't protest, not in the least, and our hips brushed each other as I explored him, letting myself take in with hands, then mouth, the muscles I'd so adored, as he was saying over and over again something along the lines of how I was amazing, or just how much he loved me (which I still didn't believe, but didn't let myself think on, because the feeling was just that strong, be it love or serious like or imprinting or plain old lust), until I was kissing him again and we might have done that for hours or days or been watched by a crowd of frantic lycanologists with wide lens cameras.

It could have just been because it was slow, every movement tested, or maybe because of the raw intensity of the energy between us, but it was, simply put, the best damn sex of my life.

When we were both exhausted, I still lay on top him, my face somehow buried in both his shoulder and my elbow, panting heavily. Both his hands remained tight on my waist, holding my hips in place, and I could feel his chest rise and fall beneath me, taking me with it, and his heart beating that slightly-too-fast rhythm they'd adopted since we'd started phasing. I guess it sounded like crying, my shuddery breaths, because, quietly but worriedly in that low, after-sex tone guys have (or, at least, the TV tells me they have) he started to say my name.

I wasn't anywhere near crying though. I was just listening to all the voices in my head screaming in joy, berating me for my stupidity, or just expressing general shock. "You can't ever leave me," I muttered into his shoulder, knowing I sounded like such a girl as I said it. "You understand me? You started this. You let the cat out of the freaking bag. If you so much as try to break my heart, I'll break you. Understand?"

His laugh reverberated throughout his chest and made my stomach tingle. "Aye, ma'am."

"Good," I said, and tried to concentrate on the sound of his heart, which could not lie, and the rhythm of his breath. I was falling asleep in his arms again, whatever little plan I might have had for the future thrown out the window by this turn of events, and with each thump-thump saying a different prayer to the gods that had seemingly returned to La Push:

Thump-thump. Don't leave me.

Thump-thump. Please love me.

Thump-thump. I love you.

Thump-thump. Don't you ever dare let go.


	17. Sigma

"There was nothing in sight but memories left abandoned; there was nowhere to hide,   
the ashes fell like snow. And the ground caved in between where we were standing, and   
your voice was all I heard. That I'd get what I deserve. So give me reason to prove me wrong,   
to wash this memory clean. Let the floods cross the distance in your eyes, across this new divide.   
In every loss, in every lie, in every truth that you'd deny, and each regret, and each goodbye, was a   
mistake too great to hide. And your voice was all I heard. That I'd get what I'd deserve."

Linkin Park "New Divide"

* * *

I was up and running the border before the sun was more then the slightest pink smudge against the horizon. I left Jake asleep at the rock, where he looked so ridiculously happy and peaceful that if he woke I knew I'd have to say something, and I knew above all I shouldn't do that. So I got up and ran, becoming the wolf, which was easier, because they didn't have to worry about jobs and boys and doing something with their lives. They just were, and nothing put the pack mattered to them. No convoluted ties to vampires and humans and werewolves for them. Maybe if I stay a wolf long enough, I'll just turn into one, and never have to worry about any of this again...   
I wasn't avoiding him. Avoiding him meant actively going out of your way not to see someone. No, I was just worried Sam's pack would try to kill us again and so was running patrols, and if it just so happened to be Monday and he just so happened to have to go to school at a certain time that happened to coincide with the time in which I was running, that wasn't anything but a coincidence. Those happened all the time. It was no big deal. I was just looking out for the pack, like I'd always done, because that was what I was here for. Certainly not to get an M.R.S. Especially not that. It was to keep Seth safe. It was all about Seth.   
And, I mean, why would I avoid him? Sure, it was way awesome sex, but he was my Alpha and I was his Beta and it was all caused by the heat of the moment and, yes, I might have said some things that implied I liked him, but I was obviously sleep deprived. Obviously. Because he was Jake, and could do a lot better then a bitch like me, who would probably live at my rock for the rest of my life, and never do anything but protect vampires. And possibly do my Alpha on occasion – wait, no, not that last bit. It'd never happen again. Never. Because he was my Alpha and I was his Beta and it was all caused by the head of the moment, and-   
Oh, God, who was I kidding? I was just waiting for the shoe to drop. A chance at happiness – a chance! - had been dangled in front of me, and I had seized it, knowing full well that nothing in my life had ever worked out before. I just knew that, if I had stayed, he would have woken up and gone on to break my heart. He would say what I knew (or at least suspected) boys always said to one night stands, and it would ruin all the good memories and- Well, I wasn't giving him a chance. Not a chance at all. Because it was inevitable that he would hurt me. That was the way life worked. I mean, look at it: no one comes out of it alive. So I would hurt him first – by just ignoring him, which was less cruel then Sam had been to me, certainly, but would still hurt. And then he'd get over me and find his imprint and move on or even just some nice girl from La Push or Forks or the Makah Rez or some school he'd be lucky enough to get out of this town and go to, forgetting this whole stupid werewolf thing. Maybe go on to become an engineer or city planner or accountant or something and have three fucking perfect kids and a dog. And I'll at least have had a taste of happiness to succour me through my bitter days, as I grew old without ageing at my rock. Life would be so much easier if that was the way the world worked, with the nice girls getting the nice guys and wretches like me being left to dry. At least then I'd know where I stood. And it made Jake a nice guy. Although-   
Yes, I really must stop this. All this anxiety is bad for my heart. There is nothing to be worried about. There is Jake and there is me and there is no us. We just had sex once. But that's it. No more. End of story. Full stop. Send to the fucking presses.   
I was feeling so wretched that I – before noon even – went to the Cullens. I was surprised to find Charlie there, sitting on one of the couches, talking with his daughter. "God, Charlie, you forget your way home?" It was kinda weird to see him still there, as I'd left him. Made me wonder if the whole last day wasn't just some bad acid trip – which would explain quite a lot, actually. Please, God, let it be a bad acid trip.   
"No," he laughed, eyes brighter then they'd been in ages, probably because he didn't know the person he was sitting next to was, primarily, dead, and, more importantly, a vampire. "Just back again to visit Bella. What about you?" Either that or he'd used his new-found knowledge of the supernatural to bang my mother last night, and, if that was the case, I would have to kill him. After I'm done throwing up.   
Frankly (and trying not to be sick over the white rug), "I live at a rock; they're the only ones around with cable," then, turning towards the ice bitch, "Where's your husband? I'm anticipating having a bad day and need someone to preemptively mock."   
"He, Rose, Emmett, and Jasper have been in the basement all morning. Alice won their bet and they're all down there cleaning."   
This could be amusing. And brighten my day. "What was their bet about?"   
"Oh, I don't know. They always have three or four going at a time."   
I didn't shout, "Bitch, you're a freaking vampire with nothing to do but toddle your devil's-miracle baby. How can you not know what's going on around you that badly, especially as it's been all they've seemed to mention for weeks?" I didn't though. I really, really wanted to, but didn't. But only because her dad was there, and like it or not he was (kinda) dating Mom, and her temper was rather legendary. So instead I asked, "Which door?"   
And behind door number three was the stairs to the basement. And the basement itself was something. I thought they just used it to store all the board games, video games, VHS, and DVDS in the world. That's certainly what it seemed like from up above. But no, there were boxes upon boxes for as far as the eye could see, tonnes of old-looking furniture covered with dusty cloths, and little bits of fabric and oddments poking out every which way. "Mirror, mirror on the wall," I muttered, feeling like I was entering a movie studio or a closet in Buckingham Palace, "where's the scariest vampire of them all?"   
Rosalie instantly appeared at my side. There was one of those old cloche hats on her head, a bright read poodle skirt around her waist (obviously), and a Vietnam-era fatigue jacket tossed over one shoulder. "I resent the implication," she said sadly, buffing her nails on the jacket. "I prefer the term 'frightening' to 'scary' – it's more dignified."   
"I was actually trying to find Mr. Potato-Ed, but you'll work too. What happened to you? Don't tell me the bogeyman is really and you're trying to 'frighten' him out." If she did, I was going to, first, totally rip the bogeyman to pieces. And then I'd wig out and demand to know whatever other damn supernatural creatures existed and where I could go to not meet any of them.   
She tisked me, pulling the hat off her head and throwing it so it – miraculously – landed in an open box behind her. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the cave today."   
"It's a rock, not a cave, and I'm having a sucky day." An obscenely loud burst of laughter exploded behind a stack of far-off boxes. "I take offence to that," I shouted towards whoever it was. Being an angst-ridden werewolf is hard work; it makes you hungry and encourages you to do stupid things. Like sleep with your Alpha. Which, no matter how hot he is, is stupid. "I'd say try living a day in my shoes but, hey, I forgot, you don't. Live that is."   
"Nor," Rose just had to point out, "do you have any shoes."   
"That, my pointy-toothed friend, is your fault."   
"We're doing spring cleaning. I'm sure we can find you something that works better then what you have now."   
"It's October. Or does 'spring' just mean you're hopping while you do it? - and why are you down here? How does cleaning count as loosing a bet?"   
Emmett, who had a three-cornered hat on his head and three boxes in his hands (the top one overflowing with what appeared to be passports and other important papers), peered at me through a gap between his arm and the boxes. "'Cause it means we have to sort through it all. Esme got fed up with us just throwing things in the attic when we were in Ushuaia in the- when was it?"   
"'53, right before we went to Island Falls, Maine, the second time" Rose reminded him, taking the top box from him and frowning at all the papers inside. "Can't we just burn these?"   
Jasper came up then, looking most amusing, with papers poking out of his shirt collar and pockets, a monocle in one eye, and a bayonet at his side. "No... I'm still looking for the papers from Winnett, Montana... and the death certificate we made up for 'Joseph Cullen'..."   
This certainly did interest me. "Who's Joseph Cullen?"   
"I am," said Jasper oddly, flipping through the papers in the box at the speed of a small tornado. "Back when Carlisle was still living in Europe, he made up a trust to keep all the possessions and money and things he'd collected over the years. He'd simply write his solicitor, tell him that he'd had a son, and a couple dozen years later have the 'son' write to say the father had died. Worked very well until he made Edward, so he just worked him up as a brother and that was all very fine and well until Rosalie and Emmett came along, because he had to now pretend to have multiple children and have them marry and have others to keep the trust going through... So when Alice and I joined Carlisle, we made it at the bank that – I think it was 'Ruby' and 'Elliot' - had just had another son, 'Joseph' and he married 'Amanda'..."   
"It's all great fun," Rose said, now going through the second box which, oddly enough contained Disney movies. "You think Renesmee would like The Little Mermaid? Or should we just put these away and find the 1935 version of Romeo and Juliet for her?"   
"Neither," offered Emmett, his box full of newspapers. "The kid'll like Dracula better, and you know it. Now these we can burn... But, yeah. Currently I'm pretending to be 'Edmund,' 'Joseph's' now fifty-something son, and 'Everett,' 'Edmund's' son, and Rose is both 'Rachel,' 'Edmund's' wife, and, 'Rochelle,' 'Everett's' wife. And Edward's playing something like my brother, our old uncle, and his own grandson."   
I think I was gaping at this point. Couldn't they just, well, not go to all this trouble? Or, like, not own so much junk?   
"We have great family feuds going on between old Uncle Edward's side of the family and 'Joseph's', and now that Bella's around we're going to have another one where we all try to have their children written out of old Uncle Edward's will..."   
"Please tell me," I said weakly, sitting on one of the trunks, a little tired and more then a little overwhelmed, "you only started this because Carlisle was too cheap to spring for HBO." God, I hoped that's what it was. 'Cause if this is what vampires did with their free time, I was running for the hills come tax season.   
"We get bored," said Emmett. "But," he grew five watts brighter just looking at me, "now that you're here, the fun can begin!"   
Cautiously, "No pin-the-tail-on-the-werewolf is allowed." Emmett had threatened it before too.   
"He means we can now tease you now for sleeping with Jacob."   
I jumped off of the box, spilling the papers they'd piled on my lap, and barked, "WHAT!" so loudly I'm amazed Jake didn't hear me at La Push and call to ask what was going on. A blush ten shades of Bella-scarlet was appearing on my face, I just knew it, and all the thoughts I'd successfully managed to forget while trying to figure out the Cullen's falsified family tree, came flooding back to me. Especially the parts about how much I liked sleeping with Jake and the more embarrassing parts about not wanting to be alone all my life and begging him not to leave me. "Don't tell me THAT was you're stupid bet!"   
"Don't have to," Jasper said, snorting at my reaction (something, I tell you, Dr. Phil never does to his clients, the stupid nose-raping feeling-stealing vampire), "you already figured it out. If you two had just gone another week... I should've known though: the lust rolling off the two of you was just ridiculous. Almost as bad as Ed-"   
The mind-reading vampire in question shouted, "I can hear you," from an unknown distance, "and I know where you keep your old army uniforms." While, quite calmly I felt, I asked, "Do you have a jack-hammer down here?"   
"Probably. Why?"   
"Because it'll probably hurt you a lot more then my fist is about to."   
Like a proper sister, Rose gave up her sibling before my fist could speed towards her 'twin.' "It was Alice's idea. Personally, I don't know what you see in the mutt, but..."   
I would have to find Alice then too. After I murdered the Cullens. I couldn't believe this – they were freaking betting on when I would get laid. That is just... aren't they supposed to be sexually repressed teenage-   
No, the teenage-thing explained it. Stupid teenagers. Stupid teenagers with superpowers. Stupid nosy teenagers with superpowers and too much free time on their hands. Stupid Jake for seducing me in the first place. Stupid-   
"I worked as a vet for a year," Emmett told me, folding a hat out of one of the yellowing newspapers and plopping it on top of the tri-corner he was already wearing for no reason that I could tell other then capriciousness. "I thought you were starting to smell like a dog in heat-"   
Tell me he did not just say that. I must now steal bayonet from the paper-snatching care-bear and decapitate Mr. Smart Mouth. Must act quickly, to save sanity and, possibly, life as we know it. Then I can go back to worrying about how to avoid Jake. And keep from sleeping with him again. Or having him break my heart. Or-   
"You're making her angry," I heard Edward's voice carry across the room again. I'm sure he's the one who realized what we had done. Great, now I must kill mind-raper too. Normally, I'd be pleased with this, but if Bella became my stepsister, then he'd be my stepbrother-in-law, and Mom would be bound to be pissed having to deal with that argument over Christmas dinner. ("You killed my husband!" "So? He invaded my privacy! And what are you even doing here anyway? You don't eat cooked turkey!") Oh well. I could live with the consequences. And could use something very sharp. Need stake... there's a clothes hanger. Would a clothes hanger do?   
"I'm just saying. Wolves usually don't mate 'til winter."   
I launched myself at Jasper, which no one seemed to be expecting, and managed to get my hands on the sword pummel before they managed to pull me off. "Stupid pack vampire-rats," I spit, trudging back up the stairs. "I'm going to ruin another X-box for that!"   
The problem wasn't the Cullens, however much I wanted it to be. It was with the clock, which seemed to be telling me that the car pulling into the drive had to be the Rabbit; with the doors, of which the only one seemed to be the one standing between me and the driveway, and with my heart, which seemed to be beating far too fast in my chest.   
I would have to see him.   
I couldn't do this. I couldn't be hurt that way again...


	18. Tau

"Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled,  
but passion is not the same thing as love. Controlling your passions while being in love,  
that's what they should teach you to beware, but love itself will save you, not condemn you."

Jolee Bindo in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

* * *

I remained rooted to where I stood, unable and unwanting to face what lay beyond. I'd had my taste of fantasy. But he would ruin me, worse then Sam had ruined me, if he left now. I knew that. It wasn't that I needed a guy or anything in my life to have meaning – nothing as stupid as that – it was that I had given him a part of myself. And if that was shattered, I was broken. Irreparable. Irreplaceable. And all the Alpha's wolves and all the Alpha's men couldn't put Leah together again.

Hell, no, that was wrong. That was wrong that was wrong that was wrong. It was that I'd pieced myself back together once before, but breaking again... I'd be more chunks of dried glue then anything else. And you couldn't make anything useful out of hunks of dried glue and bits of Leah dust. Not for all the dog food in Spain.

The door opened, and Jake entered, looked about, and saw me. His smile brightened, and he came over to me, putting an arm around my waist as he said, "Hey, guys. I'm stealing Lee. See you later," and, with that, pulled me out of the manor, still smiling. I don't know what smiling boded, but it was something not good, I can tell you that. For all I knew, Jake was secretly an axe-murderer and sang show tunes while he chopped his victims to bits and hide them in the walls of Forks High. But still, axe-murderer or not, his arm was a little lower on my hips then friends usually placed them. Could it be-?

No. Vampire-loving, flea-having, under-age axe-murderer. Not boyfriend material. Remember this, Leah. Remember. (And if you're listening to my thoughts, Mr. Ice-capades, I will teach your daughter ever rude word for vampire I've ever come up with. I'm serious about this. So stay out of my fucking head and go do something productive, like run cable out to my rock.)

Once outside, I expected him to go into whatever explanation of how he'd managed to get so intoxicated he might want to sleep with me he'd created while at school. Or maybe an we-just-got-caught-up-in-the-drama excuse that would end in a forget-about-it or an I-like-you-Leah,-but-just-not-that-way. Or maybe he had meant what he'd said last night, but once he'd realized how clingy I was going to be he decided to skip out now while he could.

But no, his arm was still around my waist, and, when he sat down on the porch, he tugged at me to join him, so that our sides practically pressed together, and that pine smell I so loved became nearly overwhelming. This surprised me so much that I didn't immediately recognize that Seth had taken up his familiar perch on the porch railing and, to my even greater shock, Embry and Quil had joined him there. "Tell me you didn't," I turned towards Jake, the anger of certain knowledge seeping through my fear and all-but-erasing it. "I'm not playing mother-fucking-hen to two more of you."

"Calm down, Leah," Jake asked, not at all surprised by my anger. His finger was tracing unseen tattoos on the bare skin above my knee. My own hand was resting, uncertain, near his, fingers curled as if to ask, "What the hell is going on here?"

"Yeah, Lee," Seth joined in, swinging his monstrously long legs so that his sandals clattered against the rails, "Quil and Embry didn't like what Sam tried to do last night. So they want to help us."

"It means that you don't have have to run yourself so ragged on patrols. And you'll still be Beta-"

"And I don't give a flying fuck if it means they'll be sleeping at the rock too."

"Like hell they won't," he reassured me, then looked at them. "Okay, maybe occasionally, but you'd go mad, Quil, if you didn't see Claire for a day, and Embry, your mom still doesn't know about us, so it'd probably be best for everyone if you weren't sneaking out as much as Sam's been having you. You can take over the after-school patrol, and Quil can do his after Claire's gone to sleep. The rest of us can stager our shifts so there'll be two of us running at a time."

Quil, a few inches behind Jake in height and with a strange brown tint to his hair that probably was what made him a chocolate-brown wolf, spoke up then, "With the two of us gone, it make yo- well, us now-"

"We need a cool name," Seth suggested, "like The Justice League, only wolfy-"

"-anyway," Quil continued as we all rolled our eyes at Seth, who was, after all, the baby. Mom had managed to get him in school a year early, so he was only sixteen. Not that it made much difference, except that the others felt they could roll their eyes at him too, "since this collective-"

"'Collective', Ateara? We're wolves, not Borg."

"Ooh, that can be our logo: we're wolves, not Borg. All we need is a name now-"

I pulled myself away from watching Jake's hand and snapped at my brother, "Shut up, Seth, about the name."

"Make me," he said childishly, sticking his tongue out.

"God, sometimes I wonder how you managed to pass kindergarten, kid."

"I just wear sandals," he told me, waving his, indeed, sandal-shod feet in my direction. "It solves the whole problem of having to tie shoelaces."

"-Anyway," Quil said loudly, "this collective, group, pack, random selection of wolves now is five. Sam just has Paul and Jared now, plus the younger ones. He won't try something like last night again. Not, at least, 'til the younger ones are better fighters."

"Not without smoking something," Embry added. "He was really pissed after you left. Almost as pissed as he was last night."

"Poor Sam," I snorted. "Life is so hard on shit-groping ass-hat false Alphas. I mean, what with the having to order everybody about and act idiotic all the time – nobody, obviously, understands his pain."

Jake stopped tracing patterns on my knee and patted it instead. "There, there, Lee. It's not his fault his brain is the size of a pea."

"Are we going to get into this argument again? Yes, Sam is a dickhead, and, yes, Jake's like the best Alpha ever. Woo-hoo. All hail King Jake the First. Can we show them the rock and the border and stuff sometime before dinner?"

"Lead on, Seth," Jake said, and, with that, my brother dropped over the railing and ran off into the woods shouting, "Come on slow-pokes!" and making me really wonder what on earth Mom was doing when she was pregnant with him because, God, it did a number on him. With a look at us, Embry and Quil followed. I slowly got to my feet, already unable to bear the enthusiasm of two additional boys, and started down the porch, pausing to glare at the eternal Olympian Peninsula rain.

Seeing me leaving, Jake jumped to his feet and caught my arm. Instinctively, I wrenched it away. "What the hell are you doing, Black?"

"We need to talk, Leah. It's kinda hard to do it while you're running away from me."

"No it's not. It's called a Bluetooth, and you clip it to your ear, and you don't have to hold the phone up to your ear while you're trying to run – you can run out and get one while you consider just how much we don't need to talk."

"Then will you just listen you me?"

My throat was swelling closed. My instinct to punch him in the face was getting quite difficult to control. Tightly, because that was all my betraying voice could manage, I told him, "I know what you're going to say, Jake..."

Surprised, "You do?"

I nodded – because that was all I could do. "I just want you to know I'm okay with it. I understand."

"Okay with what?"

Was he going to make me God-damn say it? Don't you dare, Jacob Black, or I shall take your murdering axe and hide you in tiny pieces in high school walls. "With breaking up with me." I'll start chopping at your toes and work my way up from there... and I'll hide you in the boy's locker room, where the smell of your corpse will be covered by the smell of sweaty socks and unwashed boys...

Slowly, as if I were a child. "Technically, Lee, we aren't together." Well, yes, if you want to be that way. Make it into a stupid one night stand, why don't you, so you can tell all your little furry friends what a cheap slut I am. I'll put them in the locker room with you too. And all the stupid vampires who bet on us doing it. Try spending your entire undead life surrounded by stinky socks and vampire. It mightn't be hell, but it's the next best thing to it. Except for my existence after this conversation you stupid, no-good, boy. Why couldn't you just let me ignore you? It would've been better for everyone. But no, you have to clarify and talk about it. What are you, an eight-year-old girl? Okay, no, I know for a fact, you're not, but you know what I freaking mean. So don't you dare say what you're about to say, Black. "Which is why," holy fucking mother of God, was he blushing? "Which is why," he repeated, most distinctly blushing now. I didn't know what was going on, and that bugged me almost more then when I thought I did. "."

I blinked at him. "Speak English, Black. I don't speak teenage idiot."

He took a deep breath, and tried again. "Do you want to be?"

I blinked again. I was seriously confused now. Was he asking me to run out and get Thai food, or was he trying to 'dump' me in a new and unexpected way? "Want to be what?" I asked, not even looking at him any more, focusing instead on the expensive outdoor lamp that sat by the Cullen's door, trying to figure out if it was closer to three or four hundred dollars. "Are we talking Hamlet, or...?"

"Together. Do you want to be?" he said somewhat stupidly. I felt stupid as I, slowly, found coherence in his words. And then I blinked several times, trying to figure out if I was just hearing things. "'Cause I meant everything I said last night; the only way I'm leaving you is if you want me to. So, do you want me to, or-?"

But my mind was suddenly flooded with the thoughts – and hormones – that I'd denied myself all day. Thoughts of maybe – just maybe – this time it might be different. That it might end well, which is to say, not at all. I might have a chance at being happy... So I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him so hard that he stumbled backwards into one of the poles of the porch railing, and he was kissing me back, and I swear, for once in my life, I had no complaints. Just Jake's mouth on mine and his arms around me.


	19. Upsilon

"If it weren't for your maturity, none of this would have happened.  
If you weren't so wise beyond your years, I would've been able to control myself.  
If it weren't for my attention, you wouldn't have been successful, and,  
if it weren't for me, you would never have amounted to very much."

Alanis Morissette "Hands Clean"

 

* * *

I could get very used to kissing Jacob Black. The way his mouth was hot and fierce and seared me deep in side my soul... But now, as I kissed him, pressing us so close that I'm surprised our clothes didn't turn to ash from the friction, it wasn't just kissing him. It was marking him as mine – a strangely lupine reaction, but one I supposed I should have expected – and making sure he knew too.

I don't think he had much of a problem with it, because he was kissing me back just as deeply, our need to breathe momentarily forgotten as lifted me off the porch, my legs wrapping instinctively around his waist. My back collided with the wall of the house, but I didn't much care, because, for once, all was good. I didn't know where my life was going, only that it involved Jake, and that was good, no matter what was going to come, be it more stupid Vampire-Lycan wars or half-breed children or pack members.

From nearby came the sound of a door opening and then, before I could even consider what this might entail, a male voice – Charlie's voice – began to call out, "See you, Bel-" and faltered before completing the thought. A dim, "Oh my," escaped as, realizing that we'd just been walked in on (out on?) by the closest thing to a stepfather I might ever have, we slowly, blushingly, disentangled ourselves. Somewhat. Which was to say, Jake blushed, I didn't, and we still staid fairly close, though my feet were now back on the floor.

"Hey there, Charlie. Heading home finally?"

"I, er-" he sputtered, probably never having to worry about this particular issue (ie, finding someone, mainly me, pressed up against the wall in a very intimate position with her boyfriend, mainly Jake, and remaining very, but not quite as, close to him while calmly inquiring about his day) with Is-a-vampire and Sir Edward the Thought-Stealer. It is probably something most fathers or potential stepfathers don't want to see their (potential step)daughters doing either. But the key to getting through life is acting, I've discovered, as normal as possible through the pain. Throwing insults, clever nicknames, and the use of the ever-popular double entendre, I've found, tends to distract people from many things, including the fact that you were just found rounding second with your Alpha.

"Don't worry, Chief Swan: the only monsters that'll be hanging around here," in addition, that is, to the Bloodbank Raiders inside, and The Thing, "'ll be us. Unless, of course, the bogeyman stops by again..."

This, for some bizarre reason, got Jake to speak up; his voice reverberated in his (bare) chest and stirred things in mine. "The bogeyman?"

"Yea. Sleepless Beauty, her beau, Sargent Sulky, and Dead Ed are in the basement, cleaning they old me, but I just know they're doing battle with the bogeyman and holding out on us. Well," I said after a moment of thought, leaning my head back against the wall, "either that or they were trying to house train Bigfoot and didn't want us to know."

"I hope not. I mean, what'll we do if they get other pets?"

"I say we work as Bomb Sniffers or something for Forks Police. The pay's better, and we don't need any training at all. Human," I pointed at Charlie. "Werewolf," I jerked my finger at Jake, then, spinning it on me; "even cooler werewolf-"

"Hey!"

"Well, it's true Jake. I'm the coolest wolf ever."

"No, you're the only girl wolf; big difference."

"Oh, yes, because it's so easy to pull off the I-look-like-the-back-alley-Port-Angeles-whore without actually being the back-alley whore."

"It's not my fucking fault we don't have running water at the rock."

"Still, though, Charlie. If you ever need a K9 unit, you know where to find us."

Charlie, being Charlie, just stared at us wide-eyed for a moment and then, completely irrelevant to my cash flow problems, "I didn't realize you two were dating."

God, he must have been the only one in fifty miles not to know. Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, or say something along the lines of, "Neither did I," or, "What? No? Where did you get that idea?" Jake instead managed a, "Well, you know," while I thought about just how oblivious our small town cop was and what this boded for the safety of of the town if we supernatural freaks of nature didn't patrol. "We don't really advertise it."

I heard a tinkly laugh from inside, and, because I couldn't tell which of the vampires it was that made the noise, I settled for a mere, "Shut up, blood-for-brains," as I smashed my fist against the wall. The paint cracked a little; this made me unduly happy. Charlie looked startled at my reaction – presumably his poor human ears hadn't heard anything. "Wolf-hearing..."

"Oh, well..." he said dimly, "I'm off to meet Sue..."

My eyes followed him as he walked to the cruiser parked in the drive and climbed in. "There's something seriously wrong with Charlie. I don't know what, but he's not nearly as fucked up about all of this as he should be – Mom must be making him special brownies or something. 'Cause this just isn't fucking right."

"Maybe he just thinks it explains a lot."

"All the rain makes people here dumb if they haven't realized the small town doctor is a blood-sucking fiend."

"Well, that certainly explains you then, Leah."

"Oh, does it now?"

"Of course. 'Cause thinking I'd 'break up' with you today when I told you last night I wouldn't is pretty dumb. Or you're loosing your short term memory."

I punched him in the shoulder and peeled myself away from Jake. I went to lean against the porch rail and look out over the misting landscape. "I meant it, Jacob, when I said I'd destroy you. You've seen me. I don't think I've ever said two kind things about anybody in my life, I'm a bitch thirty days a month, and, according to Emmett the Dog-Sniffer, I apparently smell a lot like a freaking dog going into heat."

"I-"

Turning around, I looked towards Jake, leaning back now with my elbows on the rail. "I'm not saying I want you to go anywhere. Hell, I'm saying I want you that much closer. But I'm just warning you what you're getting into."

"Lee," he said, coming to join me, looking out at the perfectly cultivated and absurdly green lawn that curved gently around the drive and ended without shock at the tree line. The perfection was almost too much to bear, if only because it was too damn naturally built into the woods. Vampires, in movies and stuff, had always been creatures of cold stone castles and throbbing, packed cities; the manor here in the forest just seemed to me to be a sign of them trying too hard for something they could never have. Between them, I figured, they'd lived a millennium. Seven vampires, a thousand-something years. It wasn't right. It wasn't how things were supposed to be. Granted, werewolves lived a long time too, but we still, in the end, died. Things were supposed to die. If they didn't, the world wouldn't have made it so they did. Things changed. People changed. Vampires didn't. They were stuck in time for ever and ever, and no matter how many Porches or stocks they owned, Carlisle would always be some creepy dude from the 17th century that should be wearing powdered wigs and big shoe buckles and stuff, and Jasper a civil war remnant who'd I'd already heard twice proclaiming that the success of the US was based off of its successful operation as a federation and should aim to stay that way, and Bella would be a strange Gen Y-er even when people flew around in fucking air-cars and had colonies on Mars and junk. It was evolution, or something. "I don't want white picket fences or someone to cook and clean and pop out puppies. I want you, because you're funny and you're smart and you are who you are and don't give a shit about what people think about it."

"So it's not just because of me having the rock?"

"Well, it is a big plus... but it doesn't seal the deal."

No, my stupid mind thought, we did that last night. "Well, that's good. I'd hate for you to be Frenching me just because of my real estate."

"You have serious issues, Leah."

"More like subscriptions, but that's life when there aren't enough razors in the world to solve your fur problems."

Snorting, "I've got no problem with that."

"You wouldn't, would you?"

"What can I say? You're amazingly hot as you are now," he gestured vaguely in my direction, "and incredibly sexy when phased."

"That's more then moderately creepy, Jake."

"And yet I've seen you checking me out-"

"Have not!"

"Have too!"

"Oh yes, I recall the words, 'sexy beast,' being uttered in my direction as well."

I rolled my eyes and shoved him away. "There will not be any amateur werewolf porn."

He shoved me right back. "Who said it'd be amateur?"

"Conceited."

"Arrogant."

"Egotistical."

"Vain."

"Smelly."

"Bitchy."

"Don't you have homework to do?"

"Yeah – I was wondering if you could help with it."

"What?" I think my mouth dropped in shock. This was just odd. "What in?"

"Biology –" wait, I was pretty sure he wasn't even in biology, "we're studying sexual repro-"

"You are such a nerd," I laughed. How long had he been waiting to say that? Years, maybe?

"Yeah, but you know you love me."

Still laughing, I leaned in and gave him another kiss, "No idea why, though."

"'Cause I'm just that amazing?"

"Yeah, right," but I still kissed him, not caring at all that we were still on the vampires' front porch and there was the soft crunch of feet on leaves coming from the forest that could only be Seth and the others returning, because I liked kissing him and planned on doing it often and they could just learn to live with it or, well, not. Live, that is. I still had that brilliant axe-murdering plan...


	20. Phi

I don't want to waste another moment of my life without you in it."

Sam in Garden State

* * *

The peaceful afternoon air was wrenched with a, "Oh my holy fucking mother of God."

"I think Seth's back," Jacob commented, interrupting our make-out session. Which kind of annoyed me, because I'd rather been enjoying it, even if it was on the front steps of the enemies' Fortress of Doom.

Hopping up onto the porch rail, "You think? Ten bucks he tries to hit you." I'd have bet more if I had it. It was an almost certainty that, some point, some way, Seth would have to hit Jake over this. He was an overprotective little brother, yes, but it could have been worse. He could've been Paul, for instance.

"Seth? Hit? I didn't know he could."

"He can't; that's why I said try."

"It's such a waste having a werewolf who can't fight and all."

"He likes doing the midnight patrols though."

"Yeah, that's pretty good of him. Still, he loves me-"

"Finding out that you only used him to get to me is going to kill him."

Jake rolled his eyes at me. "More like he's going to shed man-tears as he tells us how happy he is for us and ask to be your maid-of-honour."

"The only thing scarier then the idea of Seth in a bridesmaid dress is the idea of his 'man-tears'-" no, I couldn't even say that ridiculous phrase without collapsing in laughter, which I did, falling from the railing onto the hard porch (though I dented it more then it dented me) as I convulsed in the hardest laughs I'd had in ages. "Oh my God, 'man-tears,' that's just- holy fucking God, that's- oh my..." So that, by the time my brother and our apparent new packmates got to the porch, they were able to join Jake as he looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

"Did you drug Leah or something?" Embry asked, more curious then worried.

"Of course he did!" Seth shouted at him, or, at least, spoke harshly; I'd never heard Seth shout in my life. "Why else would she be kissing him!"

Quil tried to calm him down, or, at least, bring sense back to him. As he'd never had it, I was sure it was a futile effort, but at least he tried. "I thought they were dating?"

"No they're not!"

"Er," said Jake, turning away from me for a second to look at my brother, "actually we are," before turning back and contemplating me curiously. I imagine I did look crazy... but I mean, man-tears. It was just so... okay, I was probably crazy. But still.

"No," Seth insisted, "you're not!"

From the porch floor, "Save your 'man-tears,' Seth; we are, you'll get over it, and until then take a pill or something."

"Carlisle," said the midget, opening one of the living room windows and leaning out it to look at us, "has a bottle of Xanex if you need it. If not, will you kindly get off our porch so I can try and see the forecast for the SSE?"

I pulled myself to my feet and, as the boys looked at me curiously. Me? Doing what a leech asked? Something strange was going on here. Once we were all on the lawn, I turned back towards her and said, "This doesn't mean you won't find me pounding on the door of your coffin with an axe singing show tunes for your little 'bet' tonight!"

"Matchmaker, Matchmaker," she sung as she closed the window, growing louder and louder as she did – but still with an, of course, perfect voice - "Make me a match. Find me a find. Catch me a catch..."

"Shut up," I yelled right back. God, did everyone in the whole God-damn world have an opinion about me and Jake? Well, I didn't want to hear it. They could all just go and fuck themselves, because I've decided and that's it. Final. The end. Go away now.

"Matchmaker, Matchmaker, I'll bring the veil; you bring the groom, slender and pale. Bring me a ring for I'm long to be the envy of all I see..."

"Oh, go back to your fucking grave, you clairvoyant toilet-wipe," then turned to the boys. "Let's get out of here if we have to discuss this. I don't think I can stand to be around these smelly bat-bangers for much longer."

In a whine, "Yes, we do have to discuss this. What if he imprints, Lee? I can't-"

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Okay, yes, you can beat him up if he hurts me. Can we go now? The walls around her have too many fucking ears."

Seth, however, seemed to have his panties all in a twist because he continued going on about it: "You're the one who was making out with the Alpha-"

That's not all we've done, my mind added, getting its two cents in. I rolled my eyes at it and headed for the path to the rock. "Yes, yes, Seth. You two can fight over my 'honour' some other time. I'm heading to the rock. If anyone wants to join me, go right ahead. If not, I think you're pissing off Tiny Tot. She'll probably force you to play dress-up with her if you keep this up, and I've seen some of the clothes she has – and I don't want to see them on you." I really hoped Jake would come back with me, and the others would just piss off. Because we'd been, er, interrupted and I'd rather have a chance to, er, finish. And not being able to because of these three was really annoying me.

"Ah, Lee," Quil said, "don't be jealous just because they'd look better on him."

Stamping my (bare) foot down and crossing in one step the few I'd taken away from the group, who were now lounging against the Rabbit. "Okay, we're creating a pecking order, right here, right now." I pointed to Jake, then my self. "Alpha, Beta," I pointed a finger each at Quil and Embry, "Gammas." Then, without even looking at Seth, "Omega. That is how it goes. Figure out where you stand. Know that I am above you, and if you piss me off I'll make like a living hell for you. Has everyone got that?"

They all, of course, turned to Jake, which just about threw me off my rocker. Hello guys, Beta here. I can do these things, and it wasn't like I was doing anything drastic. Jake, in turn, looked at me and, with that smile of his said, "Hell, don't look at me. The Princess here makes the rules."

I glared at him. "Unless you want me to take to you Dark Vet Emmett, don't call me 'princess' again."

"Sure, sure, your highness. But I was planning on going and yelling at Sam some more today, and I figure he'll be at Emily's now. Anyone want to come?"

"What," quipped Embry, kicking off his shoes, "and mess up your freaky date? Never. I'm going to patrol." Seth followed after him, already smiling, but with a grumpy expression in his eyes.

Quil and Jake both climbed in the Rabbit, and, as I walked towards the path to the rock, my beloved Alpha leaned out the window and said, "Aren't you coming?"

"As much as I'd love to see you beat up Sam again," and I really rather would, "no. I feel like breaking something, and I think I know just the love-bat's cabin..."

"It'll be fun..."

"I'm not that cheap a date, Black."

"I'm sure we can round up a meal or two too..."

Okay, so I climbed into the car after that. But who can blame me? After last night's... exertions and this afternoon's anxiety and all of this more packmates business, I was hungry. Plus, I know it was stupid, but I kinda didn't want Jake out of my sight now that we'd become "official," like now all sorts of imprint-peril lingered about every corner. Plus, I couldn't deny there was a chance we could come across an unused bedroom along the way... God, I was worse then a teenage boy! Or, at least, sounded so in my head. But, God, the way Jake kissed me, like I was his and he was mine and no one, not any stupid imprint, would get between us, made me...

I am not a dog in heat. I will not act like one. I am not a-

"So," asked Quil from the front seat, interrupting my mantra. I glared at the back of his headrest, and tried to continue, "what is The Spawn like, other then having the worst name in the world?"

I am a human being. Who just so happens to shift into a wolf. But I'm primarily a human being. Not a dog. I will not act like a dog in heat. I will not-

"Well, other then growing ridiculously fast, she's mostly okay. Drinks blood, but eats human food too. Ridiculously smart – Edward was teaching her Portuguese over the weekend – and can, almost, beat Leah at monopoly."

Pardon me while my mind just sinks into how sexy Jake's voice is, even while he's talking about The Loch Forks Monster. Thinking about sex in the back seat of your boyfriend's car is a bad idea, Leah. A very bad idea.

"You're playing Monopoly with the leeches now, Lee? What's the world coming to?"

"Not much," I managed, "It was either Monopoly or learn to play three-dimensional chess. And I was so kicking her ass until you showed up." Now shut up so I can think back over last night and bask in every single detail now that there's a chance of it happening again.

But would Quil shut up? No. He continued his the-world-is-coming-to-an-end speech by asking, oddly, how we'd gotten together. I was struck by a maddening sense of deja vu and decided to try to try to cut the tracks before the train got so far he was asking us to give him pseudo-nephews while he was still young enough to enjoy them, because, if he did, I'd have murdered him right there, no axe needed. "It was two months ago, in July. I was in my room and suddenly I hear this weird noise outside my window. When I look, it's a mariachi band with who else but Jake in front of them, carrying this huge bouquet of red roses, proclaiming his undying love for me..." Actually, if he ever tried that, I'd probably smash one of the guitars over his head.

Quil, as was the intended effect, snorted. "Jake was in Canada in July."

"He came back for me," I shrugged, sliding farther down in my seat, so I was practically hidden in the back seat, "and, since he was just pissing me off at the time, I didn't tell anyone."

"She jumped me," Jake corrected as we pulled onto the Rez.

And I'm about to jump you again. Ditch the paedophile so I can.

"Yeah, that sounds like Leah."

Hello, still in the car, people. I debate if this would be a good time to mention what the Cullen's bet was about, decide its not, and settle for a, "I think you and Billy are in cahoots."

"Fuck, I hope not," Jake said, turning right a little too sharply to be comfortable. "'Cause man, if you are, I'm going to have to throw you out of the car. While its still moving."

Ooh. I saw opportunity. "Do it anyway; I want the front seat." And then we can finally finish what we started.

Looking at me in the rear-view mirror, "You may be the Queen of the Pack, Lee, but in the Rabbit, I'm in charge. And he called shotgun, so..."

"Plus," Quil added, causing me to kick his seat once he had, "it's bro's over ho's-"

"I am a woman, not a fucking farm tool, you bag-sniffing wart-breeder. Hey, drop me off here."

Jake stopped the car at the corner, but turned around to look at me like I was crazy. "Are you telling me you want to go home?" Because that's where we were stopped in front of. My house.

"No. I just want to take a shower. You go ahead and punch out Sam for me, then swing back by before you scavenge dinner." And so Jake did just that. Because, I, apparently, was Queen of the Pack. Not bad considering. I guess bitchiness gets you places in life after all.


	21. Chi

"I'm going to rub your faces in things you try to avoid.  
I don't find it strange that all you want to believe is only that which comforts you.  
How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity?  
How else do we define cowardice?"

The Preacher in Frank Herbert's Children of Dune

* * *

I'd just gotten out of the shower and was towelling dry my hair when there was a knock at the door. I figured it was Jake and Quil come to get me already, 'cause I had spent a long time in the bathroom. Dirt really builds up when you live at a rock and whatnot. I threw on the same dress I'd been wearing when I'd arrived (it was like all of the clothes I still owned, short and low-cut, and had the advantage of being easy to tie to your leg, with the exception that this one was a green colour) and ran to the door shouting, "Since when do you idiots knock?" But, flinging the door open, it was rather alarmed not to see Jake and Quil at the door, but Sam. Quite eloquently, I thought, I spat, "Holy shit," in his face and slammed the door back shut. "Go away, douche-bag."

Calmly, for Sam, he pounded at the door and said, "Lee, I just want to talk."

"Then talk through the God-damned door, you moron. It's not soundproof."

"Let me rephrase: I want to talk like adults."

"Come back then when your balls drop and we'll deal then."

"Leah..." he sighed. "Look, it's not even you I want to talk to." Well, don't I feel special. Go away then. "I'm looking for Jacob."

"Funny. He's out looking for you. Something about beating you up for being such an idiot yesterday – well, greater idiot then usual – and for trying to maim me. He really didn't like that. I know it's gotta be weird trying to figure out why someone wouldn't be all to happy if you maimed their girlfriend, but..."

"And I'm sorry about that-"

I gave a bitter snort of laughter and slid down the door, so I was sitting with my back pressed against it. "Oh. Yes. That makes it all better. You could have killed me but, hey, you apologized, so no worries. Water. Bridge. Under."

"The half-breed-"

"Oh, just listen to yourself for a minute why don't you? Sure The Things strange, but so are we. You don't see people going around trying to kill werewolves do you?"

"Leah-"

"Besides, it's not about Nessie. Not really. It's all about you and your stupid-ass need to be the jerk in charge. Hell if you're acting like an idiot, it doesn't matter 'cause you want everyone to bow down to what you have to say. And now you're all upset 'cause you're the only one who wants to kill a baby who doesn't hurt anything 'cepting maybe a bloodbank, and Jake rebelled against you and Seth and I and now Quil and Embry went with him."

"Quil and-"

"I thought the part where they didn't come back into your waiting arms after school might've given it away. But yea, for better or worse the two of them have gone Benedict Arnold on your ass. Now go away."

"Leah-"

God, why the fuck wouldn't he go away? "It's odd, but I think the leeches actually bother me less then you do," which was very odd, considering I was going to murder them tonight for betting on when Jake and I would sleep together. I'd not yet decided what show tune I wanted to sing while doing it, I remember hearing something about how Elton John had made a musical out of The Vampire Lestat or something, so I guessed I could always go online and find something from that, but that was too much work for a murder... I knew random songs from Disney movies. They could die to the sounds of Walt Disney. That would be torture enough for anybody.

But, the idiot just wouldn't leave me the fuck alone and, for some odd reason, thought it would be a good idea to continue to talk to me through the door. I resolved not to say anything. Maybe if I was quiet, he'd think there was no one there. It worked with some of the crazy cult people. And girl scouts. Don't get me wrong, I loved girl scout cookies, but the actual people themselves just weirded me out; they were like the miniature, high-voiced soldiers of everything that annoyed me. So, yes, Project Ignore Sam Uley has now started. I will sit here and wait for him to go away. He's like a two-year-old – no attention span at all; - it can't take long.

"Look, Leah, I'm just trying to do the right thing here. Regardless of whether or not they actually kill people, they're a danger. A danger to La Push and a danger to Forks and a danger to everyone else. Okay, so The Spawn's going to follow their 'diet'? So what? Remember the battle?"

"Hell yeah, you duck-smoking boner-rider," I almost said. But I didn't, because I was trying to ignore him. If I didn't think he'd come through the door the moment I got up, I'd have gotten the phone and tried calling around for Jake and Quil... but that'd take ages. We really needed to find a way to keep from loosing cell phones while we were phased, 'cause communicating when we weren't is kinda difficult.

Anyway, the bastard continued, "All those vampires? Newborn vampires? So close to town? Not only were they a threat to us, think of all the people in Seattle that were killed or lost people because of them while that woman was making them."

Almost, again, aloud, "Mama Vamp is dead," and no one else, that we know of, has a grudge against the Cullens. Except us, but we weren't going to kill them. Not for being vamps at least. Murder them for being bastards maybe, but not because they were doing a very unconventional blood drive amongst the Olympic Peninsula's fauna. Thus my date with an axe later. If Jake and I don't-

And we're not going down the path of Jake's hotness while Sam's standing outside my door. Isn't Mom supposed to be home? Wasn't Charlie supposed to be running into her after he left Monster Manor? I mean, I'd not heard her and she'd not shown up after I got out of the shower or made an attempt to answer the door, but I'd not even thought to look in her room... God, gross. Wrinkly old-people love. Can't even think. Must hope that they're out looking at pottery or antique hairbrushes or something. Think of better things – food, Jake, Sam on fire – anything. Anything but that.

But the honest to goodness problem is, when I'm quite for too long I start thinking. Thinking about how werewolf genes have done much for my benefit, as far as how they're expressed in Jake, that is. Thinking about how at this very moment Jake could be out looking for Sam and instead run across some girl from school and imprint on her and ruin everything. Again. Thinking about how it could happen like in five years or something, and ruin everything even more. About how, if you'd told me I'd be dating Jake the day before, I'd have laughed at you. About how, according to Emmett, I smelled like a dog in heat, and how we were wolves, and how (as I'd learned, along with many other frightening details about wolf sexuality that hopefully didn't transfer over to werewolves) only Alpha pairs mate in wolf-packs, and how he was the Alpha and I was the only wolf-girl and how my scent had started to change only after our pack had broken off from Sam's... About how, if I smelled like a dog in heat, if that meant I'd have to worry about that God-awful thing people call a period again, and all that comes with it. Like birth control. Like, if that was the case, would I-?

"And that was only the most recent thing. They all-but-broke the treaty turning Bella, and now there's her daughter to deal with. What if they turn another person to be her mate when she grows up? What if half-breeds like her can have children? How many more vampires are we talking about moving to Forks? Two? Ten? How many more Quileute children does that mean will start phasing, at younger and younger ages? How long does it mean we'll be doing this? Another five years? Ten? A lifetime?" For every year the Cullens' stayed, we spent another year in perpetual youth. The boys all looked to be in their early twenties, even Seth, though some of the younger ones looked like they actually belonged in high school, but still. I'd not changed one bit since I first phased... which did wonders for my skin and meant I never had to worry about shaving my legs, but was kinda annoying. We could get away with it now, looking twenty-ish when we were about that age. But we could live for ages like this... if the Cullens chose to stay, perhaps in isolation, going to school or to work in other parts of the state, where they could easily run to and from in an hour or so, and then "coming back" to Forks as their own supposed kids in twenty years or so... And we'd be forty-somethings looking no older... The legend of Taha Aki had him living for three generations, at least... "People would notice that, Leah. We have birth certificates. We went to school with these people. What'll we tell them when they're fifty and we're still looking like we did when we were teenagers? When the funerals start happening, and we're still the same?"

"People can say whatever the fuck they want." Ooops. That came out. Ignore. Must ignore everything the tea-bagging melon-pincher is saying.

"It's not like the days when our people first started shifting. I mean, we're living an a Rez where maybe three people a year go on to college outside the county, and the best job around is the canning company half-hour away, and the only people who stay on the Rez after they graduate are those, like us, who have to or those who don't have anywhere else to go. But still. There are electronic records. Video cameras. A million people with cameras posting on YouTube. The longer we stay different, the more likely someone's going to notice something, or someone'll slip up...

"And what if the Cullens' slip up? Or one of their 'friends' visits and starts attacking the town? What if-?"

I could play the "What if?" game better then anybody. I didn't plan. I didn't expect anything out of life. I didn't think a God-damn day ahead if I didn't have to – not any more, because plans were meaningless in this world. You could make them, have the best of intentions, think everything is going smooth as silk, and still they'd derail. Did I ask for Sam to break up with me – when I could have gone to the University of Washington and gotten out of La Push and maybe done something with my life, or made a million dollars, or cured cancer? Did I ask to turn into a wolf who could, apparently, go into heat like any other canine and have to deal with that, whatever it might entail? For Dad to die? For Mom to start dating Charlie? To fall in love with Jake, to risk everything, again? God no.

"Shut up, Sam," I told him through the door. "Obviously you've not gotten the memo: life isn't some happy-go-lucky '50's dream, you zombie-humping ass-poker. Things go the fuck wrong all the time. Plans have to change. You just have to take what life throws at you and do the best you can with it. Get religious and beg for forgiveness and understanding and whatnot if you think that'll help, or go home to Emily and marry her properly and have so many freaking cubs you have to start numbering them and just have a family and find some sort of comfort in that; or just deal with it by dealing with it, 'cause that's the only choice you have. Or else you can go and be one of those idiots who jumps off the cliffs to kill themselves 'cause they can't take it any more and give Emily a chance to do something with her life after you and let the rest of us who actually are plodding along here get on with the business we've been set to do. Now get off my freaking porch and leave me the hell alone, like most ex-boyfriends do with their ex's."

There was silence for a while after this, and I almost thought he'd gone when he started to speak again – my name real soft and low that if I didn't have supernaturally freakish hearing, even as a human, I probably wouldn't have heard. But I did. And it sent shudders throughout my body – and not the good kind, like Jake had done (and already my world was slowly becoming wrapped around him and our pack and his idea to protect the vampires from our cousins and our former pack brothers). No, this made me remember just how bad it'd hurt when he'd broken up with me, out of nothing, and when he'd tried later to apologise, or even later when he tried explaining it away by imprinting. That tone of voice wasn't mine any more, not from him, and I didn't want it beside. I was long over him. Besides, I'd someone else who said my name that way, who promised never to leave me unless I wanted him to, and so what if he was my Alpha and jail-bait and all of this could be broken if he imprinted on someone else? I was willing to take that risk now that I knew he'd not been acting out of whatever made people have one night stands. But I couldn't take Sam trying to usurp that tone and speak to me like he still loved me – like he still could love me – and had my best interests at heart. Because I knew better now. Being fucked-over by a guy tends to do that.

I was going to insult him some more when the blessed sound of fist hitting jaw resounded through the air, and the weight of Sam's body flew against the door I was still leaning against and shook it mightily. There was only one person who I could imagine doing something like that to La Push's favourite child, and I was proven right as opened the door (causing Sam, in surprise, as he'd been leaning against it, to fall backwards at my feet) and saw Jake, vibrating as he tried to keep from phasing, standing there, in only shorts and more then a little damp from the rain or maybe sweat.

My heart fluttered more then a little. I'll admit it. I think it's always fluttered looking at him – and why wouldn't it when he looks like that? - and I wonder how long this thing has been building between us and how much longer its been mutually denied. "Hey Jake. As you can see, Sam dropped by."

But Sam, looking sharply from one to the other of us like he was at a tennis match, was already getting up.

"That was a terrible joke, Leah," Jake chided dryly, then turned to Sam. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

Oh, please, I thought. Let's not go through this all again....


	22. Psi

"The galaxy will just keep going. Everything, even the Reapers, will come around again.  
But you and I, we are important right now. And this is what will never happen again. Us."

Kaiden Alenko in Mass Effect

* * *

Luckily, however, my quick recap of, "Sam was looking for you. Instead, he decided to annoy me,"seemed to keep that issue from rising back up.

The glare Jake was levelling at Sam broke for a moment, and he turned to me, smiling. "Everyone annoys you, Leah."

"Yes, but he was worse then even those Seventh Day Adventists who came through town last year."

Surprised, "He was singing gospel?"

God, I actually wish he had been. That would have been less of a torture then this. "No," I told him, moving towards the couch and collapsing there. Examining my nails, I was disgusted by how much dirt was still under them. If I'd the money to invest in such a project, I might've gotten a manicure or something, just so some part of me looked like a girl for once, and to see if it meant my claws changed colour with the nail polish. Hmm... I could paint them electric green and when I phased I could tell everybody I'd poisoned claws... See if anyone tried to attack me then. "It was just the usual rant about how irresponsible we're all being."

"Ah. I suppose this would be a bad time to tell him about Billy's request then."

I rolled my eyes. If I had my way, that whole conversation with Billy would be forgotten. "I thought you were going to beat him up – or are you waiting for me to make popcorn or something?"

"Would you like popcorn?"

"No, I'm good."

"In that case," he spun on Sam, who was still watching us like some odd tennis match, growing slowly angrier and his eyes darker as we continued. Though Jake, still deliciously glistening from the rain (hey, I've I'm going to date him, I have every right to drool over him. It is my prerogative as his girlfriend and my right as a woman. And, of course, preparation for jumping his bones as soon as he kicks Sam's ass) looked like he wasn't going to burst out of his skin any time soon, Sam was all but growing furrier by the second. "You and me need to have a talk about boundaries and the way you don't try to kill your ex's."

"As I was telling Leah-" Sam began, trying to calm down, which only made Jake angrier.

"And she said you were being an idiot, so I don't want to hear it." Smart Alpha. See Sam, he listens to me. "So we need to come to some sort of compromise."

Lo and behold, they sat down at the kitchen table and did. It was kinda weird. And not really a compromise and more of a list of things Jake was willing to put up with from Sam. This pretty much amounted to being, Sam and his pack patrols La Push and our pack keep an eye on the vampires and their land. If the Cullens or one of their "friends" does anything untoward, we'll take care of it. If a vampire or something else (the bogeyman, bigfoot, militant girl scouts) wonders onto La Push, Sam can deal with it however he sees fit. There will be no crossover, except as far as the boys going to school (I was adamant on that fact, and it was the first non-insulting thing I said throughout the conversation), and after they graduate La Push will be Sam's entirely. After the leeches leave, maybe we can join back together, but for now, this is the plan.

Oh, yeah, and if Sam tries to kill me or Nessie or anyone else again, Jake will kill him. End of story. Even I was kinda scared of Jake when he told Sam that.

The day would've ended well if that'd been the end of it. But of course it wasn't.

"I'm not just going to sit by and watch you hurt her," my dear old ex, who seems to forget an awful lot that he's an "ex" and therefore not entitled to any opinion on my life.

So I tossed the first thing that I could reach – a spatula – at him. He caught it, of course, but it made me feel marginally better. "My life, dickweed. Don't you think that we already had this discussion? That I might learn from my mistakes – i.e., dating you? So go share your opinions with someone who actually cares. Like the National Inquirer."

But Sam was Sam, and he really did honestly think he was doing the right thing, which was kinda annoying. I mean, Sam might've been the oldest of us – he'd be twenty-three soon – but that doesn't mean he knows everything. Despite what he may think. "Old Quil is the only one left who knows anything about the last pack – and even then, all we really have are legends. There's so much about ourselves we don't know. What if-"

"Oh, not this game again," I interrupted, jumping down from the counter (where I'd been sitting, going through three apples, a pear, and half a box of Frosted Flakes). "I'm getting sick and tired of having to listen to this. Haven't you two decided everything that matters? As much as I'd like to watch the battle of the machismo, I really wouldn't. I'm a big girl. So, since this looks like the last time I'll be on La Push for a while, I'm going to grab some more clothes for me and Seth."

I hated going into Seth's room – it was like a shrine to every comic book and Star-whatever movie made – but I grabbed him some shirts and some more shorts and a jacket, because him going to school in the fall without one was likely to have someone call Children's Services on Mom, and he honestly wouldn't think to grab this stuff himself. It went into this ratty old army surplus bag Dad had used when he went fishing with Billy and Charlie. I paused at that on my way to my room, wondering what Dad would think of this latest development. Would he be like Billy, all but cheering Jake on in the bleachers, or would he laugh at the idea? What about Mom? I'd not told her, though she was bound to have picked it up on the rumour mill. I'd not be able to see Mom for a while unless she came off the Rez to see me or went to the Cullens, the latter at least I couldn't see her doing. In the background I heard Sam yell – very loudly, probably annoying the neighbours, who'd be forced to call the cops (i.e. Charlie, wherever he was, from his date, shudder, with Mom) and that would be bound to end well – something about how Jake had no right, la-de-dah, and Jake yell right back that, if I wanted to fuck him, that was my business. And then I sighed. As great as it was Jake was standing up for me, Sam just took all the pleasure out of it. And if either of them phased in the house, there'd be all that annoying fur to vacuum up, and nothing sheds quite like an angry Alpha except for maybe two of them.

I didn't want to be the practical one here. I hated practicality, or, at least, once had. It was my job in life to run a patrol and see to it that Jake and Seth, and now Quil and Embry, went to school and slept decent hours, even if it had meant 'til now that it had me running ragged on school nights and just giving up all together the afternoons and hoping the Cullens were keeping an eye on things. In my free time, I insulted things. I'd already had nine good ones in my head to call Embry besides the usual "bastard." Three of them evolved soap operas. Most emphatically, I was not supposed to be spending my free time making sure that my brother has clothes to wear to school that don't make him look like a ragamuffin (God, did I just think that word? I've spent entirely too much time around the leeches. Next thing you know, I'll be using words like ergo and anti-dis-establishment-arianism. They now much die. Listening to High School Musical) and arguing with my ex about how he's not the boss of me, and wondering what else I should pack to bring to the rock. I mean, clothes yes. And the leeches have food and running water and all that. But what do we really need? Socks? No... More sleeping bags. That's what we need. Because this plan means we'll be seeing a lot more of Embry and Quil, and poor Ms. Call will probably think her son's avoiding her or run away or something if he'll only be allowed on the Rez during school hours, and Claire probably won't be too happy about limiting her Quil time. But we took all the sleeping bags from our house and Jake's... and we'd have to swing by Quil's and Embry's anyway to grab stuff for them... and school supplies. Those might be important. I hope to God that they have that stuff, 'cause between us I don't know how Jake's finding the money to pay for gas for the Rabbit, let alone school lunches for him and Seth.

I sighed and stood up from my bed, where I'd been sitting, staring sadly at my dresser, wondering how I'd gotten into this mess and how, since I was the self-proclaimed "Queen of the Pack" I was going to get out of it. I didn't want to have to, but I knew where Mom kept a stash of a couple emergency twenties, which would probably be enough to last a week or so. As I headed up the hall to Mom's (thankfully empty) room, I heard the door slam downstairs. I hoped it was Sam leaving, 'cause I was still more then a little peeved at having been interrupted with Jake earlier and even more so for having to deal with Sam after. By the sound of the bounds up the stairs, I knew it to be Jake, and turned back down the hall before even entering Mom's room. "So, the bastard's gone?" He looked almost as angry as he'd been when he punched Sam, and his hair was still a little wet and kept on falling in front of his warm, brown eyes. It was hard to not look.

Slowly, Jake nodded, coming right up to me and lifting me off my feet, pressing me right up against him as he kissed me. For several moments we stayed like this, then began the long, tumultuous journey into my room. Only once he'd pinned me beneath him on the bed and moved to do wonderful things with his mouth on my throat (all our clothes discarded somewhere between the here and there) that made very noticeable actions elsewhere, was I able to get out a, "You should argue with him more often, Jake; I like the results."

Pulling himself away just enough to respond properly (as my hands traced the planes of his chest), "He seems to think you have no decision-making process of your own, that you're just doing what I want."

If that was the case, Jake, I'd have thrown you from here to Kathmandu, wherever the hell that is. But I just kissed him instead, 'cause I'm pretty sure he already knew that. Which was what he'd been arguing to Sam about. Which was why he was kissing me now, and if there was a little bit of spillover from our wolf selves with how good he smelled, or how good I smelled to him, it didn't matter, because I knew why I loved him and vice versa and we'd a proper bed and no one around to bug us.


	23. Omega

"One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel."

Madam Pompadour in Doctor Who: "The Girl in the Fireplace"

* * *

I walked into the Cullen Manor sometime the next afternoon – without knocking, of course – and headed for the kitchen. Mama Vamp was in there, mixing something by hand and looking very much like a mid-century housewife. I didn't know how she could be happy doing this, but I guess if you've spent the last hundred years or so drinking blood, cooking for werewolves is a novel experience. But whatever, it was her life. She had to do something with it. Her husband was always at one hospital or another and her children were either in school or fighting with each other over the remote, what game to play, or what movie to watch for the eighty-third time. For instance, when I came in this afternoon, Ensign Empath and Muscles-for-Brains had been betting over some international table tennis tournament while using a world map and some very believable army men in the strangest game of War I'd ever seen. Rosalie was knitting again, and Mistress Midget was on the phone with either a French designer or a French stockbroker, or quite possibly both, and was making odd little hand signals to her husband about what moves to make. As for Bella-dona and her husband, presumably they were in their love shack... shacking up. So, yea, being the matron of this household had to get pretty boring fast. But it worked out for me. It gave me cinnamon rolls.

"What'cha making?" I asked, sitting down on one of the bar stools. I glared at my dirt smudged, leaf-entangled reflection in the refrigerator. Stupid vampire propensities for shiny things. Worse then magpies. I'm half surprised they hadn't stolen the keys to the Rabbit yet.

"Waffles," she said, scrambling the eggs, frying the bacon, stirred a pot each of oatmeal and porridge (or maybe it was something else, whatever the difference was between the two) and baked beans; pulled toast of the sparkling titanium toaster, scones and waiting sausages out of the oven, and a pre-prepared plate of some combination fried vegetables, fried rice, and steak, the latter of which she placed in front of me, all while just answering my question. "What kind of syrup do you prefer? I think we have maple, strawberry, blueberry, apple-cinnamon-" She paused when she saw I was looking at her blankly. "You'll have to forgive me," Esme said, putting down the latest tray of whatever and turning down the stove, "it's been a while since I actually made breakfast. When I was human, there weren't nearly as many choices as are available today... I'm afraid I tend to get carried away."

For once, I actually wish Bella was here, so she could tell her vampire-in-law I'd have been happy with a carton of Pop Tarts. But if wishes were fishes, Billy would be a lot happier then he was now. When we'd gone over to his place yesterday afternoon to tell him of Sam and Jake's decision, he'd been almost in tears. Well, maybe not tears, but he distinctly told us that the moment I got pregnant, he wanted to see us both, end of story, and he'd deal with Sam when it came to that. I shudder at the very memory of our conversations with Billy. Though, if the reason I smelled like a dog in heat was because I was...

Oh, yes, just what I always wanted: a rock and a kid and a boyfriend in high school.

Anyhow, Esme looked so sad that I actually felt sorry for her, and I found myself going, "There, there. I'm just a little overwhelmed..." and I'd never seen fried rice for breakfast, but, hell, it was good and soon I was on to the more traditional bacon and eggs.

"I'm glad I can do something for you five. I feel so awful having you live out in the woods when we've plenty of extra rooms here."

I watch her curiously as she cleans up, covered dishes going into the industrial-sized oven to keep warm, pots and pans suddenly becoming clean... "It's okay. Really, it is. We've a great tarp-thing going now, and the boys are all in Wood Shop, so I'm going to get them to build a proper roof and maybe a bunk or something so we don't have to sleep in the mud, but really, it's fine."

And, surprisingly, it was.

"Still, your parents-"

"Are living with it. It's what kids these days do – move out, move in together in huge clumps of humanity in substandard housing, and get low-paying jobs. We're just staying closer to home then usual."

She looked at me curiously, in the way that parents sometimes do, where you know they're thinking, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" but what she really said was, "I was going to say your mother and Jacob's father can't be pleased with the two of you living together."

I didn't snap something at her for being a tight-laced Victorian, because, honestly, she was and probably wouldn't have seen the insult in it. Instead I said, "Mom's down with it," or, at least, I assumed she was because she hadn't come onto Cullen ground to yell at me, "and Billy is all-but-feeding Jake Viagra. Really, Mrs. Cullen, it's the twenty-first century. It's what people do."

She looked at me sceptically, but let me eat in peace. Half-hour or so later, the boys came back from school, and joined me in the kitchen. "How was it?" I asked perfunctorily, grinning stupidly at Jake, who took the seat next to mine and began eating off my plate. I pushed it his way, and spun the barstool around to look at the others. "Get into any fistfights today?"

"No," they said, each with varying degrees of exasperation.

"Pity. Anyway, Esme left food for you in the oven."

"Thank God she can cook," Embry said, pulling the plate out with his bare hands and proceeding to, also with his bare hands, eat half-a-dozen waffles drenched in maple syrup. I decided right then that it was Sam's dad who'd had the affair that'd ended up with Embry, and a hundred percent not Billy or Young Quil, "or we'd be royally screwed."

Quil, who was using eating utensils at the very least, "I dunno. Seth can bake a mean chocolate cake."

Sadly, it was true.

"Werewolves cannot live on chocolate cake alone," Seth broke in with a façade of wisdom; "you need ice cream too."

There was a cheer from my brother and the "Gammas," while I shared an indulgent look with Jake. "They've been like this all day," he told me sadly. "I think I'm having the first case of werewolf migraine ever."

"There are enough drugs in this house to kill an elephant at five paces. I'm sure we can find something to deal with a headache."

"We need to totally have a party." A Pharm Party? Interesting, but...

"Yeah. We've broken away from Sam. We must celebrate by going down to Port Angeles and finding a bar or something that'll let us in." Ah. That kind of party. It was bound to end badly.

"Have you looked in the mirror lately, Embry? I've seen college students who look younger then Seth. We could get in easily – the question is more, why would we want to?"

"Why the hell not? Remember Claire's dad's bachelor party?"

Jake looked at me again, waving his fork as if to say, "See what I have to put up with all day?" I raised my eyebrows to counter - "I have to deal with the leeches – I win."

"God no!" Quil said.

"Well, of course not, we weren't there. But remember how people are still talking about how it was the best party they every had? I say we throw the greatest party known to werewolves."

"I am surrounded by idiots and imbeciles," I sighed. No one but Jake seemed to hear me.

Embry continued, "We can drive up to Seattle and give Jake a proper stag party."

This peaked my interest. And apparently Jake's. "Pardon me?" Once again, I was ignored, looking instead at all thee of them like, "What the hell has gotten into you sheep-bagging wart-scum?" This time, it was by my own brother:

"No! We can't take Jake anywhere were he might imprint upon anyone other then my sister."

"We'll keep him blindfolded all night."

"Yeah, right, like that'll work."

"Okay, so maybe not, but what's the likelihood he'd find his soul-mate at a titty bar?"

"I don't know – he's dating Leah, so I'd say pretty high."

"Why," Jake said rather louder then my curses had been, "do you want to throw me a stag party?"

"One," said Quil, who seemed into the drinking part and less so the naked women part (thank God, for once in his ridiculously long life, that imprints are good for something after all. Even if all they want to do at this point is play dolls with each other), "'cause Karen Ruesoe was flirting with you all through English and you didn't even notice."

"Two," supplied Embry, "Billy has all but sent out wedding invitations for you two, and I half suspect him to pounce on us at school and ask how many times a day we think you two are doing it." The bad part was, I could totally see Billy doing that too. The mercury from all the fish has to have finally turned his mind.

"Ew! Gross!" Seth exclaimed, pushing away his half-eaten plate. "Little brother in the room!"

"I'm in the room," I pointed out. No one, again, seemed to care. I think I'm going to break something now. That crystal bowl looks expensive...

"And three," Jake finished for them, "you just want to have a party."

"I'm going to go look for that Xanex Alice was talking about," I said to no one in particular, and left the boys to their fight. I would have pointed out it was a school night, but I doubt that would have helped any, nor would the fact that bar owners tend to like people to pay for their drinks.

In the living room, Jasper now seemed to control most of Russia and a large swath of outer Mongolia, while Emmett had control over India and northern Africa. Alice was now a third party, destroying both sides from the Americas. I sat next to Rosalie, who was still knitting. "Boys suck," I told her solemnly.

"Tell me something I don't know," she said, purling with practised ease.

I told her my theory about Embry and Sam having the same dad.

"The one thing in life that will never change: the porcine qualities of men."

From the floor, moving his army man with realistic shooting noises into the Ural Mountains, her husband protested, "Babe, don't be that way."

"I also," admitted Jasper, now rolling a pair of sixty-four-sided die, "take great offence at that."

I yawned and played with the end of the blanket she'd already finished. "They want to throw Jake a bachelor party."

This, for some reason, caused Emmett to jump up, scattering many of his pieces and breaking them beneath his bare, bearish feet. "I knew it! I win this round."

"You bet on that too!" I screamed, jumping up so that I was yelling right into his face. And punch him, which, while it hurt, was still satisfying. After betting on when we'd sleep together, they just had to have another bet on this? And for what? Cleaning out the attic this time? "You jerk. For your information, Jake and I are not getting married, it's just this stupid idea they have, and-"

"Leah," Rose broke in.

Angrily, "I know he's your husband and all-"

"Actually, I was just going to offer you one of my knitting needles."

"Oh, thanks," I said with the greatest surprise, and then, turned on Emmett, who was already racing up the stairs. It was only thanks to my supernatural hearing that I heard her, moments later, as I was crawling under a bed after my prey that I heard her say, "No problem, I've February anyway."

And, with that, began the second great Vampire-Lycan battle of our time.

**Author's Note:**

> chapter titles come from the Greek alphabet; and, yes, I realize that I forgot Delta


End file.
